Vital Nourishment

The publisher would like to thank the French Ministry of

Culture - Centre National du Livre - for its assistancewith this translation.

2007 Urzone, Inc.

ZONE BOOKS1226 Prospect Ave.Brooklyn, NY 11218All rights reserved.No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in aretrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by anymeans, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying,microfilming, recording, or otherwise (except for thatcopying permitted by Sections

107 and 108 of the U.S.

Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public

press), without written permission from the Publisher.Printed in the United States of America.Distributed by The MIT Press,Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Lodon, EnglandFirst published in France as

bonheur

Naurrir sa vie: A 1 'ecart du

2005 Editions du Seui!.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jullien, Franois, 1951-.

[Nourrir sa vie. English 1Vital nourishment: departing from happiness

Franois Jullien ; translated by Arthur Goldhammer.

p.

cm.

Includes biblio g raphical references.

ISBN 978-1-890951-80-1I.

Life. 2. Meaning (Philo sophy)

3. Philo sophy, Chinese. I. Title.

BD431.J7813 2007128-dc22

2007023996

Contents

Priface

Feeding the Body /Feeding the Soul:

The Symbolic Divide 11II

Preserving the Freedom to Change

23

III

To Feed One's Life /To Force One's Life;

O r, How the Attachment to LifeTurns against Life 33

IV

Vacations: Finding Heaven in Ourselves

VVIVIIVIIIIX

Without "Soul"

55

Do We Have a " Body"?

65

Feeding Your Breath-Energy

75

Procedures of Vital N ourishment

Exempt from Happiness

10 1

On Hygiene ; or, The Desperate

D esire to Endure 119

XI

Anti- Stress: Cool, Zen, and So On

XII

Condemned to the Eternal Silence

To think through the concept of living from a detached p ositionis far from easy. Unlike the notion of "life , " it resists abstraction;its specific form does not emerge in the very act of contemplation. Living is a form of capital that must be nurtured and maintained; it concerns the hygiene of longevity. I have already exploredthis notion of "living" in two earlier works . In

idee,

Un sage est sans

I examined variations on apothegms derived from philo

sophical constructions that pursued knowledge and truth . ! And in

Du "temps, "I explored the concepts of transition and duration, the

phenomenology of the moment and of seasonal existence, as

opposed to a notion of time delineated by "a beginning" and "anend," a product of European physics insofar as it hastens existencetoward its End . 2 Those essays led to a schism between "living" and"existing:' That schism in turn cried out to be supplemented byanother divide, between coherence, arising out of the breakdown ofbarriers b etween opposites, and the logic of sense made dramatically taut by the question why (in

L'ombre au tableau).3

Finally,

there was the subj ect of p ainting itself, the nonobj ective obj ect,transcending all others (the painter, in the Greek definition, is the

zoographos, or, as the Chinese say, the "animation of the living" (seeLa grande image n' a p as deJorme).47

'-Jl1l\ L

N O U R I S

Living has no meaning

M E N T

by way of proj ection or fabula

tion) , nor is it absurd (despite the spiteful reaction of disbelief ) ; it

is

beyond meaning.

That is why approaching the question of living

by way of vital potential or capital seems to me salutary: that way,

the ineluctable distortions of ideology are kept to a minimum.Where can one begin in thought if not with some opening, to befollowed like a fissure to deposits more deeply hidden?The crack I shall follow passes between Chinese and Europeanthought. Each time I strike at a particular point with my pick, Iopen the fracture a little wider, until I expose certain notionallodes lying on one side or the other, deposits unrelated to oneanother but yielding riches in their respective domains. Havingthus deepened the opposition, I look anew at the conditions underwhich European reason became possible, with an eye to unsettlingthe obvious and reconfiguring the range of the thinkable .My starting point is a very common Chinese expression: "tofeed one's life :' It eludes the great divides between body and souland b etween literal and figurative through which European culture has so p owerfully shaped itself. Yet today we see what wasconsequently repressed returning to menace the contemporarymind, solicited as it is by the temptations of exoticism.Pulling a bit on this thread of "vital n ourishment," I see themesh of our categorical oppositions begin to fall apart: not only atthe level of the psychic and the somatic but also on the series ofplanes we distinguish as vital, moral, and spiritual. The goal is torecover some sort of wholeness of experience from the depths ofthe verb "to feed" when it is freed from these operational distortions - to the point where the idea of finality so commonly proj ected onto it is eliminated and the appeal to happiness, to whichwe aspire , dissolve s . Indeed, might not the Chinese literati, infreeing themselves from the pressure of sense or meaning, be tell8

P R E F A C E

ing

US

that the ability to "feed life " is simply the ability to main

tain one's capacity to evolve by refining and decanting what is

vital in oneself, so as to develop that vitality to the full?What this j ourney affords is, once again, an opportunity to verifythat the thought of the other remains inaccessible unless one iswilling to rework one's own.In this reworking, one's " own" thought ceases to exist. Thepurpose of dialogue between cultures is not to attach lab els indicating what belongs to what, but rather to create new opportunities, to give philosophya fresh start.I

The Chinese text that I follow in this study is attributed to Zhuangzi (or Zhuang Zhou or Chuang-Tzu, circa 370-286 BeE ) , especiallyChapters Three and Nineteen, "On the Principle of Vital Nourishment" and "Access to [C omprehension of] Life ." What remainsof this author's work is, of course, a corpus that was assembledsix centuries later and is of a rather composite nature. Usually Iname Zhuangzi himself as the author of the "inner chapters" of thiswork, which are the most authentic and certainly come from thehand of Zhuang Zhou; as for the later chapters of the work (the" outer" and "miscellaneous" chapters ) , I use the italicized form

Zhuangzi in order to mark the different status of these texts when

necessary.sAt the end of the book, I bring in a thinker from the period ofthe Zhuangzi compilation , Xi Kang, who wrote a celebrated essayinflecting the philosophy of vital nourishment in the direction ofhygiene and longevity.At times I use the general expression " Chinese thought." Toavoid misunderstanding, let me say that I am not extrapolatingsome overall unity to a body of thought seen from a distancefrom the texts under examination. Nor do I regard it as somehow9

V 1 T A L

N O U R i S H M E NT

eternal, ignoring its extreme diversity or historical development. I

am referring to Chinese thought as a product of its

language, that

is, a body of thought articulated in Chinese Gust as Greek thought

is that which speaks Greek) .

10

CHAPTER ONE

Feeding the Body/Feeding the Soul:

The Symbolic Divide

"To feed" is the most basic verb , the most fundamental, the mostI

rooted. It expresses the primordial activity, the primary, basic function, the act "I" engage in even before I am born or begin breathing. Because of it I belong to the earth, forever. Like the smallestanimal crawling in the dirt, like the smallest plant, I began by feeding myself. It was through feeding that activity b egan in me, and itis that activity - which we cannot dream of shedding, which guidesus with its rough hand, with the iron hand of hunger, where fatebegins - that defines the most general class to which we belong:"we" living things. At the same time, the verb "to feed" lends itselfto a variety of transpositions, insinuating itself - and leading us into the most elaborate parts of the lexicon: I nurse a de sire , adream, or an ambition (in French: je nourris, from nourrir, to feed);reading fe eds the mind; my mind feeds on fantasy; my style isundernourished ; and so on. On the one hand, "to feed" is a verbthat imposes its own meaning: blunt, raw, stark, and irrefutable ,the factual in its unadulterated state, allowing no room for guesswork or ambiguity, no notion of variation or softening, no possibility even of imagining that the word lacks a perfect counterpart inevery tongue . It is eternally the same and endlessly repeated, muchas the very act of feeding indefatigably repeats itself in our lives: if11

V i T A L

I do not feed

N O U R I S H M E N T

I die . On the other

"to feed" introduces

the most distinctive and perhaps even ideal requirements. It re

veals and promotes other levels and other resources, which emergeas vocations or even destinations: the divine is what helps to feedthe winged apparatus of the soul, Plato tells us. For while the soulsoars in pursuit of the gods, grazing in the pastures of truth, thecontemplation of true realities is its "nourishing foo d ." Or, thesoul "feeds" on mu ic,

en mousike he trop he.

We know how the philosophy of language reined in this nascent

disorder at its inception. Or, to put it another way, we know howeasily this proliferating usage was brought back under control: itwas enough to distinguish between the literal and the figurativesenses. Just as I feed my body, said Plato, I feed my soul: the relationship is analogic. I posit two plan e s or segments, and at thesame time I assume some "kinship"

(sun8cneia) between them. Thus

the meaning of "feed" was bifurcated as the great codification op

posing body and soul, or material and spiritual, required. It straddled the great divide b etween the visible and the invisible , thelatter conceived as the intelligible. But such a classification is premature, is it not? And is it quite as self- evident as it seems? Does it notthreaten to obscure the full experience of feeding? Or does it not,at any rate, threaten to obscure "experience" insofar as it remainscomple t e , in the sense of being b oth fundamental and compre hensive, or "vital," that is, the experience of survival, development,and refinement? Because "feeding" also serves to express the ideal.As fundamental as it is, why should it not retain something of theunitary? In other words, why should it not establish within itself arelation other than one of analogy? Why must we plunge ourselvesimmediately into this alternative: to feed the body

or (metaphori

cally) to feed the mind (feeling, spirit, aspiration) ?

This split is fundamental. Hence we must begin by examiningit anew so that the presuppositions of our thinking can be ques12

F E E D I N G

T H E

B O D Y

I F E E D I N G

T H E

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tioned. For nowadays everyone knows, or at least intuits, that this

division marks an important fork in the road, the place where thefate of the s o - called " Western" mind was historically decided.Indeed, Western religious tradition merely sanctioned a decisionalready inscribed in language: the true "hunger" is for the word ofGod; its mysteries are "food"; and the Lord has gathered for usthe "bread" of Scripture. Christ gave us the bread of life . " C arnal"nourishment is rej ected in favor of "heavenly" nourishment. Andso on. Thus patristic discourse, comfortably adapting itself to thisdistinction between the material and the celestial, two worlds itwas unembarrassed to eat always in parallel, speaks of the "milk"that feeds novices in the faith, th "vegetables" used to treat thosestill sick with doubt, and the more solid and substantial nourishment reserved for the elect in the form of "the flesh of the Lamb:'M anna already symbolized this future n ourishment, because , asO rigen tells us, in order to have manna one must not "remainseated" but must "go out of the camp ," that is, the body in whichthe soul is imprisoned . ! Thus to react by seeking, as Andre Gidedid, to return to the "fruits of the earth"

(les n ourritures terrestres),

fails t o escape the symmetrical alternative o f concrete or symbolic

in which we are trappe d . 2 Although we have ceased to believe ,and although we go on trying to secularize our thinking, we havenot unlearned the implicit division to which our language hews soclosely, for its convenience is undeniable.In Chinese, however, we learn the common, everyday expres sion yana

shena, a " t o feed one's life," and i t unsettles the

suppos

edly unshakable division described above . Its pertinence b egins

(discreetly, to be sure) to be less self- evident. For the meaning of"to feed one's life" cannot b e narrowly concrete and material, butneither does it veer off into the spiritual, for the life in questionhere is not " eternal life :' Though no longer reductively terres trial, the meaning a l s o resists tilting toward the celestial. " M y

\!i T A L

life , "

i'J O U R i S

N T

globally, is my vital potential. These were

the terms in which the first "naturalist" thinkers in ancient China,

reacting against any subordination of human conduct to any transcendent order whatsoever, be it religious or ritual, defined human nature: " Human nature is life," nothing more . 3 To feed one'slife is the same as to feed one 's nature . My entire vocation andsole responsibility lie in the care I take to maintain and developthe life potential invested in me, or - as another common expression puts it, elaborating on the same theme - in the care I take tonourish its essence or, rather, its "quintessence, " its "flower," its"energy," b by preserving its "cutting edge:'c In other words, notonly must we replenish our strength even as we expend it but wemust also perfect our abilities by cleansing our physical existenceof impurities, we must hone our edge while also maintaining "ourform" (though the "form" in question refers to more than just theshape of our bodies). Another common expression, which mightbe translated literally as "feeding calm , " d can hardly be understood literally; to do so would yield too narrow an interpretation,made rigid by the projection of our grammar and thereby cuttingoff understanding. More loosely interpreted (and making gooduse of that looseness), the expression means to "nurture" and restore our strength by availing ourselves of peace and quiet, that is,to take our rest, to recover our serenity, to "re-create" ourselves,by withdrawing from the world's everyday cares and concerns. Itis neither physical nor psychological - or, if one s till wants toinsist on these rubrics, it is both at once. This indissoluble unity isinvaluable: it will, provisionally, guide our inquiry. To take anotherexample, "to study life,"

xue sheng,e means in this

context not to

study what life is (as it would be if defined from the p oint of viewof knowledge) or how to live (as it would be if defined from thep oint of view of morality) but to learn to deploy, preserve , anddevelop the capacity for life with which we are all endowed.4

F E E D I N G

T H E

B O D Y

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T H E

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Thus the ground shifts, undermining philosophy even before it is

philosophy, by which I mean before philosophy conceives what itconceives (before it conceives

if conceiving) ,

prior to whatever

choices and questions are within its power to make explicit. In hisnomenclature of the living, Aristotle distinguishes and names threetypes of souls: the nutritive, the sensitive, and the thinking. Thenutritive soul

(threptike) ,

which subsumes animals and plants

along with man , is primary; it is the basis of the other two. Yet atthe beginning of the

Nicomachean Ethics,

Aristotle explicitly ex

cludes life that feeds and grows but is also subj ect to corruptionfrom his consideration pf human life: " Life seems to be commoneven to plants, but we are seeking what is peculiar to man. Let usexclude, therefore, the life of nutrition and growth:'5 It is easy tosee that the specificity of man's development will be sought in therealm of thought and knowledge , of nous and

I080s,

at the (dis

tinct) level of the "theoretical:' To divert attention from the

generic fUrictions of nutrition and growth and thus to dissociateintellectual activity from organic life in an effort to conceive ofman's "essence" and his development is, of course, fraught withconsequences. Note, however, that ancient Chinese thought wentin exactly the opposite direction: it deliberately turned away fromthe activity of knowing, which is endless and thus hemorrhagic interms of energy and vitality, in order to concentrate on man ' sability to u s e and preserve the vital potential vested i n him. Take,for example, one of the most profound ancient Chinese thinkers ,Zhuangzi, a contemporary of Aristotle's, whose thought I shall b eexploring i n this b o ok. Consider t h e op ening sentences of hischapter "On the Principle of Vital Nourishment": "Your life has alimit, but knowledge has none. If you use what is limited to pursue what has no limit, you will be in danger [of exhaustion] . If youunderstand this and still strive for knowledge , you will be in danger [of exhaustion] for certain:'615

V I T A L

Both

N O U R I S H f\Jl E f\Jl

thus begin with renunciation, but the two

renunciations are diametrically opposed. Where does renuncia

tion take us, however, if it is no longer toward mind - the

nous of

the Greeks ? Zhuangzi explains this in a crucial passage, which can

not be translated without a gloss, since it draws explicitly on Chinese medical art. If one no longer follows the endless and aimlesspath of knowledge, one must return to the source of our physicalbeing, to a very different organ , namely the principal artery (du) f,which traverses the back from the base of the spine to the base ofthe neck and conveys the subtle breath of life that allows this vessel

to regulate our energy. The i rifl ux of energy passes through the emptyinterior of this artery, from its base to its summit, without deviating from its designated path. This is the "line" of life , the rule andnorm of conduct to which we must cleave . This shift in focus isfundamentally important: it stops the dissipation of thought inknowledge and removes us to the vital median axis where organicregulation is maintained moment by moment. Only in this way,Zhuangzi concludes, can we "pre s erve our person , " " completeour vitality, " and "live )Ut all our years to the end:'In order to appreciate the significance of this reorientation t o ward organic vitality and away from the temptation of knowledge(a temptation the Chinese clearly also felt) , we must first recognize that the ancient Chinese had no conception of immortality.Since their world, unlike that of the Plato's

world to which escape was possible, the

Phaedo,

had no

other

only conceivable duration

of existence was the embodied life of individual b eings . Life as

such did not persist in the souls that ascended to mingle with thewinds of yang, nor in those that returned to the earth to mergewith the energies of yin . H enri M aspero - though still undulyinfluenced, in my view, by European terminology - summed thisup by saying that for Daoists , the " eternal life " of " s alvation"16

F E E D I N G

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meant " long life,"g understood "as a form of material immortality

of the body itself:'7 The ground suddenly opens beneath our feet:can a body hope for such longevity when the process of achievingit must be seamlessly integrated with the phenomenal world?Zhuangzi thus allows for a different type of dream, or, morenotionally, for a different "ideal:' If it is not of this world, at leastit is

if this life, insofar as this life must be "fed:' Although he posits

no paradise (not without evasiveness, at any rate ) , he is pleased

to describe beings who - like the genies of distant Mount Gushi,who fed on wind and dew, and the Old Woman - have skin "asbright as snow" and re ,tain "the delicacy and freshness of virgins , "

or "the complexion of infants:' "After a thousand years," they tire

of this world and ride the clouds back to the empyrean, followinga "way,"

dao,

which is precisely what wisdom claims to teach and

which Zhuangzi characterizes by the verb

shou:h to know how "to

keep" by purifying.8The Old Woman, when asked about her childlike complexion,uses expressions that will at first seem enigmatic (to be patientlyelucidate d , avoiding all haste ) . By clarifying and decanting dayafter day (exactly what is being clarified is not discussed here , because only through gradual renunciation does "it" become perceptible ) , I come little by little to treat the "whole world," "things ,"and even "life" itself as "external" and therefore no longer a burden on my vitality. I then gain access to the "transparency of morning," thereby making visible a form of "independence" that is theonly "absolute:' There, "past and present abolish each other," andeven in the midst of this "tumult" nothing stands in the way of"placidity:'9 Once attained, this placidity preserves longevity and"feeds" life . Elsewhere in this corpus , Zhuangzi writes that if thetroubles of the outside world are shut out so that they are neitherseen nor heard, the last screens disappear, leaving us face-to-facewith "clear tranquillity, " and "we no longer exhaust our physical17

V I T A L

being," no

N O U R I S H M E N T

"rattle" or shake our "quintessence" (about this

key term , which we have already encountered , I shall have more to

say later on) . l0 At that point we

hold on to

"all the vitality of our

physical being" and enjoy "long life:'

I will not interpret this gradual, methodical access to the "transparency of morning, " in which one "sees [the] alone [independent, emancipated, unique] ," as a mystical experience because allof this is the Old Woman's response to a specific question, whichis entirely concerned with being-in-life: "You are well on in years,yet you have the complexion of a young child. How do you do it?"Questioned as to her dao , the Old Woman describes how she unburdens herself of every vestige of a cumbersome, energy-sapping"exterior" so as to focus exclusively on her

inner or vital cap aci ty.

This capacity after gradually purifying itself, at last communicates

directly ("transparently " ) with the pure (full) regime of natural"processivity, " with the "taoic" ("unique" ) , which consequentlyremains continually present. This is the key point. Although theyouthful glow in question may require loftine s s and transcendence in order to attain itj it is not to be interpreted figuratively,for it p ertains to the non-aging of the physical being. By methodically abandoning all my external and particular investments andconcentrations that consume and dissipate vitality (including thosepertinent to my own life), I become one with its common source.At that stage , the youthful Old Woman tells us, I will b e completely unencumbered and therefore know how to " remain incontact" with vitality's perpetual renewal, so that I will stop growing old.But how is it that we ordinarily allow our attention to flowoutward instead of concentrating on what lies within - the

vital

equivalent of a Pascalian diversion? The following anecdote pro

vides a counterexample: while strolling idly in a chestnut grove atDiaoling, Zhuangzi sees a "strange magpie" that swoops d own

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and grazes him in passing. Zhuangzi is astonished that despite the

size of its wings the bird cannot fly well, and that despite its gigantic eyes it does not see him. Clearly the bird found itself suddenly unable to use its natural capacities. But why? Zhuangzi hikesup his robe and hastens off in pursuit of the bird, cro ssbow inhand. At this point he sees a cicada that has just found a nice coolplace and "forgotten itself:' Nearby, a praying mantis hides behinda leaf and, just as "heedless of its safety" as its prey, prepares tocatch the cicada. The magpie, of course, has been following thetwo insects, thinking only of when it might grab them b oth; it wasthe lure of this advantage that caused the bird to also "forget itstrue nature:' But has not Zhuagzi, in chasing the bird, made thesame mistake? This thought continues to trouble him for days. l 1 Inpursuing an external profit, or at any rate seeking to satisfy hiscuriosity, which drew his attention to the coarse outside world, heneglected not his conscience (or moral being or ideal aspirationor anything of that sort) but his " own person , " his individual"ego , " which becomes "authentic" when divested of all externaldistraction . He too endangers his vital b eing by forgetting tomaintain it. Zhuangzi speaks of "forgetfulness," expenditure, andtherefore danger but not of error, much less of sin: in this worldwithout final judgment or the hope of resurrection, the imperative is not to "save one's soul" but toWhy have I chosen to delve into the

scifeguard one's vitality.

Zhuangzi and trace the devel

opment of a philosophy of the "vital" and its "nourishment"? The

reason is not just that I see here a significant and, indeed, in manyrespects exemplary fork in the road away from the implicit choicesinherited from Greek philosophy and responsible for its rich harvest. This p ath, of cour s e , gives us an opportunity to adopt an"external" point of view, itself highly elaborate and self-conscious,from which to reconsider the theoretical prejudice (that of theorein)

V I T A L

that

our mind

N O U R i S H M E N T

" our" here refers to the Western

"we , " which grew out of the search for truth and freedom) . I confess, though, that I am more interested in the very conditions ofmy own particular thought and, to that end, in how (that i s , bywhat strategy) I can gain some perspective within my own mind.For this , the externality of Chinese thought, its deconstructiveeffect, is useful to me. I prefer this course to taking theatrically anovert position and proposing a "thesis, " an exercise in which philosophy all too often indulges to demonstrate its prowes s . Thistime, something else is at stake as well. Or, rather, the question of"feeding one's life" raises a new issue, which I saw emerging earlier but which here takes on a new dimension and obliges me tocommit myself more openly. For clearly the attention ancientChinese thinkers paid to feeding life , which is undoubtedly stillamong the most significant, influential, and durable traits of contemporary Chinese mores, ressonates with a major and growingconcern among Westerners today, a concern that is in a sense

verting

con

many of them. In a dechristianizing world that no longer

defers happiness to the hereafter, and which is by the same token

less and less inclined to sacrifice in the name of a higher cause (beit revolution, fatherland, or what have you) , we are in fact left,once we have rid ourselves of all these proj ections and associatedhope s , with nothing other than the need to manage and maintain"that" which, if nothing else, at least cannot be suspected of b eingan illusion: namely, the

life capital that is

imparted to each indi

vidual being and that, stripped of all ideological guises, is said to

be the only indubitable and therefore authentic "self."As proof of this, I cite the extensive (sub)literature (on wellb eing, health, vitality, and so on) that flourishes today in magazines, on the fringes of the medical as well as the psychologicalwithout drawing much substance fro m either. This literatureoften m akes reference to China, as if China were some sort of20

F E E D I N G

T H E

B O D Y / F E E D I N G

T H E

S O U L

safety valve capable of liberating us from the powerful dualisms

the West is now condemned to bear as its cross (and as if the greatWestern philo sophers , including Plato and D e scarte s , had notthemselves labored to transcend these same binaries). Today thephilosophy sections of bookstores have been replaced with shelvesdevoted to an amorphous subj ect located somewhere b etween"Health" and " Spirituality:' They are filled with books on "breathing," "energetic harmony, " the "Dao of sex , " ginseng, and soy. Ithardly needs saying that this bastardized philosophy vaguely linkedto the " East" and proliferating under cover of cloudy mysticism isterrifying. There is, o(course, a big difference between the "undividedness" that will guide our inquiry - and whose theoreticalconsequences I wish to expl ore - and the troubled waters inwhich " self-help" propagandists fish for the easy profits to b ereaped a t the expense of indolent minds . M y method i s opposedto this , and that is why I cannot refrain from denouncing the guiltyideological conscience that has insidiously taken hold today. It ishigh time that ideas about breathing, harmony, and feeding be rescued from this pseudophilosophy and coherently integrated intothe realm of philosophical reflection. Otherwise, Western thoughtmay casually abandon the ideals it has constructed and plungeinto a socially disastrous irrationalism. This essay is also, secretlyand without any need to develop the point explicitly, political aswell as philosophical.Zhuangzi at least did not hide the thought which opposed theattention he devoted to feeding life: the debates between the philosophical schools, for example, which pitted the Mohists againstthe Confucian s , and , more broadly, all the effort poured intoargumentation, a practice which wastes energy (embodied forhim by the sophist Hui Shi, whom he describes as sitting "with hisback against an eleococca tree," consuming himself with dialectical refutations of the "hard" and the "white")Y Also opposed21

V!T

N O U

l S H M E N T

were heroism and the will to act: the " authentic men

the past"

"did not train for feats of arms" or "make vast plans."!3 AncientChina was, of course, a culture without an epic. Zhuangzi alsoasked if one must sacrifice for the good of the world, gaining renown by giving up one's life so that " others might live : ' 14 Thusthe question of feeding one's life also raised the question of whatI believe is the most radical of human choices - more radical, inany case, than that between good and evil or

and Virtue in

Hercules between Vice

our antique staging. Prior to the problem of values,

which are always to one degree or another external, is the issue of

the care and management of the self, the principle of which , wenow know, is principally

economic.that which Zhuangzi did not envis

At this stage, we at last find

age. For while he had no difficulty seeing beyond morality (because

concern for the good of course hinders the expression of vitality) ,he did not imagine how loss and pleasure (pleasure through loss)might be justified. Nor did he see what might justify a desire that,rather than consuming us because we failed to protect ourselvesagainst it, is deliberately chosen and cultivated at the expense oflongevity (even though all hope of immortality has b e en aban doned) . Moreover, it is difficult to imagine how these two attitudes can be reconciled. Two possible attitudes exist toward thevital capital that is amassed through the "feeding" of the "self."Either we

preserve it

as best we can, purifying and decanting it so

that it is not atrophied by the consuming pressure of the "exte

rior," by preoccupation, fear, or desire . Or, we act like Balzac'syoung hero Raphael, who negates in one orgasmic outburst all themeticulous effort devoted to preserving it, rushing "drunk withlove" to his death in the lavish luxury of a Paris hotel. In this "lastmoment" he transforms the final spasm into apotheosis throughthe vigor of his violation: "no longer able to utter a sound, he sethis teeth in Pauline's breast."Is22

CHAPTER Two

P re s e r ving t h e F r ee d o m t o C h a nge

A break like Raphael's would b e expenditure and its tragic chal

lenge , confronting its limit. O r: in contrast, it could be the delib

erate protection of one's potential, where, through an encounterwith the philosophy of immanence, it develops into thedom. For in addition to writingwrite at a

distance from it.

about one ' s

dao of wis

desire, one can also

Yet can this Chinese feeding of life be

come as intimate for us as Raphael's fate? We have stumbled upon

a moment of resistance and it is precisely what we must take asour point of entry into this other form of intelligibility. My bias asa philosopher leads me to b elieve that what is commonly called"personal development" does not require us to convert but ratherdevelops its own criteria for coherence. How can what we havedesignated both the

preservation

and the

purification of something

called the "self" come together in an articulated form? Or, to put

it another way, how, by emancipating, decanting, and refining myphysical being, do I learn to "preserve" its ability to grow and todevelop my vitality to its full ("daoic") potential? Let us begin, weread at the beginning of one of the "outer" chapters of the Zhuan8-

zi, by eliminating all activities and all forms of knowledge extrane

ous to the desired telos: he "who has mastered the true nature oflife" is not concerned with anything removed from life ; he "who

V I T A L

N O U R I S H M E N T

has mastered the true nature of fate" is not concerned with anything that does not influence that fate . l A series of conclusions follows. "To feed the body" one must "begin with material resourcesand goods ." Yet even if "we have more than enough material re sources and goods , " "the body may still go unnourished." At ahigher level, "in order to ensure our vitality, " we must "begin bymaking sure that life does not leave our body." But we also knowthat " even if life does not leave our body . . . our vitality may verywell diminish :' In other words,

Zh uangzi

concludes, contrary to

what is all too frequently believed, "feeding the body is not enoughto maintain vitality:' Feeding the body is a necessary condition ofvitality, but it is not sufficient. This leads logically to the centralquestion : in addition to feeding the b ody, what else is necessarybut not separable from it (thus ruling out something spiritual, asopposed to the physical) , if I am to "feed" not only what I reductively call my body but also, and more essentially, or "quintessentially, " my life ?Viewed solely in intellectual terms, the problem might be posedas follows: only by imagining what transcends my b o dily formwithout divorcing itself from the physical, so that it vitalizes orenergizes it, can I think of "feeding" in a unified way, avoiding thedistinction between the literal and the figurative . But what mediation can effectively link these two distinct levels and thus banish

from

my

exp erience the great dualism

of the physical and the spiri-

tual? O n what grounds, that is, can I conceptualize this qualitative

elevation ,

which does not

cut itself cifJ fro m

the concrete ( and

therefore does not produce the famous "qualitative leap " ) ? Thismediation can be found in the transitional phase Chinese philosophy terms

the subtle,

or that which , without necessarily leaving

the realm of the physical and concrete (and therefore without reference to the order of faith) , is nevertheless already liberatedfro m the encumbrances, limits , and opacities of the concrete.

R E S E R V 1 N

T H E

R E E D O M

-;-C

.A N G E

Although the Chinese did not investigate different and distinct

levels of "being," as the Greeks did in their search for pure knowledge, they were nevertheless passionately interested in the rtiflnedand

decanted, which they believed was more " alive" because it was

more fluid and less reified, and from which they hoped to derivethe maximum effect.There are various angles from which the subtle becomes accessible to experience. In aesthetics, for example, there is the exquis i t e flavor o f the barely perceptible, whether i n sound or image, inthe transitional stage between silence and sonority in music orb etween emptiness aqd fullness in painting, when the sonic orpictorial realization is barely evident or on the verge of vanishing.Whether just b arely outlined o' r already beginning to fade, thesubtle ceases to impose the brute opacity of its presence and canno longer be confined. Diffuse , vivid, and insinuating, it continues to emanate indefinitely. In military strategy, the subtle refersto the flexibility and suppleness of a maneuver undertaken beforeforces are deployed on the ground, thereby rendering the opposition relatively inert. If I remain alert, I elude my enemy's graspand my extreme responsiveness constantly replenishes my potential. Conversely, my adversary is hampered by the rigidity of hisplans and deployments. I maintain myself in the agile posture ofthe virtual, while the other remains mired in or confined by theactual and thus vulnerable.All Chinese practices derive from this . At precisely this point,

Zhuanazi

introduces a term m entioned earlier which points in

this direction: the term we have begun to translate as "essence" or

"quintessence," which might also be rendered as "flower," "choice,""elite," or "energy"

(jina).a This belongs to the realm of the phys

ical, but it is not raw; it has been refined. Originally it denoted

the seed of selected or hulled rice, thefinej1eur as one says of thegerm of wheat in French, but it was also applied to human sperm,

VIT A L

N O U R I S H M E N T

and indeed to any form of matter that has

to the spirit ofbeen decanted, subtilized, and thus energized and endowed withthe ability to communicate its effect. For this reason it opposesthe phase of the tangible, the opaque, the inert, the numb , and thecrude. By using words such as "subtle ," "spirit," and "quintessentialized," I am well aware that I may seem to be reintroducing anobscurantist vocabulary that predates the great conquests of Western s c i e n c e and its experimental, mathematical , and m o d e l oriented rationalism, whose prodigious truth effects cannot bedenied. Nevertheless, rather than avoid the word as a vestige of anarchaic m entality, I have chosen to dwell on it: for besides theimportance of this term in the

Zhuangzi,

it also provides us with

an opportunity to use the parallel between Chinese thought and

the history of our rationality to recover and rethink preciselythose aspects of our most fundamental experience - the experience of life that modern Western science has covered up and ob scured with its characteristic procedures (traditionally we haveallowed this sort of thing a place only in alchemy, but only toexclude it all the more thoroughly) . Nowadays we approach suchmatters only obliquely, by way of culturally repressed antirationalist, esoteric, and mystical categories, whose ill effects I deploredearlier. Our realm of intelligibility instead needs to welcome the" subtle" and "quintessential, " which are the products of refinement and decantation and which bridge the gap between the concrete and the spiritual, the literal and the figurative . Zhuangzi hassomething to contribute to this task.This will help us to grasp, in a form other than a moral

tapas,

how the lack of concern with, and disengagement from, the affairsof the world recommended by both Eastern and Western wisdomcan in fact

reinforce the vitali ty f the self Zh uangzi

goe s on to

explain how, by committing myself ever more deeply to the proc

ess of emancipation, refinement, and decantation (compare the26

P R E S E

V I N G

T H E

F R E E D O M

T O

C H A N G E

verbal repetition in Chinese, jing er you jing ),b I simultaneously

fre e myself from the fixations , stumbling blocks, and encum brances - the crude screens that worldly affairs place in front ofmy inner flux and dynamism. I thereby restore the limpidity, subtlety, and alacrity of that flux and thus relate it ever more closelyto the constant

iriflux that links

life to its source, both in myself

and in the all- encompassing world process. For as the nutritional

metabolism of my physical being already reveals at the most elementary level, and as the alternation of "concentration" and "dispersion" that marks the time of life and d eath exhibits on thecosmic scale , " feeding one ' s life , " by entering into an ever -increasing subtilization (quintessentialization ) , will nonethelessalways come down to this: "to remain open to change."c This is thefirst maj or point: nutrition is not progress toward something; it isrenewal. The transformation that it brings about has no other purpose than to reactivate something (forsaking the problematic ofsense to which the West is so attached: because life in itself makesno sense, as we know). Or, as Zhuangzi says earlier on the samepage, in a formulation too concise to be translated literally: whenI achieve "equality-placidity" by freeing myself from the "bonds"and impediments of worldly affairs and cares , I discover in myselfthe capacity for the natural transformation that perpetually irrigates the world. By connecting with this process and remaining inphase with its immanence

(yu bi) , d

I put myself in a position to

"modify - incite" and therefore to reconnect continually with life

(in myself ) , rather than allow it to cling and adhere - to someinvestment, some representation, or some affect, as caring aboutthings inclines us to do - and subsequently to stagnate and wither.Here, though, there are grounds for disappointment. We had hopedto gain intimacy with the form of coherence associated with "nourishment," to the point where it became a life choice. Probing

V i T A L

N O U F ! S H M E N T

heneath the intricacies of our thoughts , we claimed to discover

what was least ahstract in them, the source of our vitality. Butonce this "nourishment" is no longer limited to the feeding of the"body, " must it fly off into the realm of the speculative ? H ow canwe express that which constitutes experience without immediately splitting it in two ? How can we construct it without losingit? A little later in the same chapter discussed earlier, we readabout a prince , who asks a visitor a question: "I've heard that yourmaster t aught [how to nourish 1 life . What did you learn fromthis?" The guest offers an enigmatic answer: " I swept at the master's gate with a broom. What do you think I learned?" One mightconclude that the guest is either avoiding the question or beingmodest, but I do not think that either is correct, because not toanswer is in fact to provide an answer of sorts. It suggests that thequestioner must make further progress before he can hope to b eenlightened. More than that, however, the act of sweeping i n frontof the master's gate indicates in a most basic way that the visitorplays a discreet but effective role in the preservation and renewalof life . Frequently, particularly in Japanese temples , those whoparticipate in the life of the temple sweep its stairs or wipe its banisters with a damp cloth, moving in a way that is neither nonchalant nor overexcited, neither hurried nor fatigued, cleaving to theform of things without pressing on them or breaking away fromthem. I believe that what we have here is an answer in the form ofan action, or, rather, a movement, if I may put it that way: themovement of sweeping, which is repeated for each step . Theprince fails to take in this answer, however, and is no doubt waiting for some theoretical content. His order elicits a laconic response: "I have heard my master say that to be good at nourishinglife is like feeding sheep: if you notice some of the sheep stragglingbehind, you whip them:'An image comes readily to mind: sheep graze here and there,28

P R E S E R V 1 N

and a few

T H E

F R E E D O i'vl

T O

C H A N G E

wander awavfrom the rest of the flock. Scatj

tered across the countryside, they lag behind and slow the others'advance . But why sheep? Perhaps simply b e cause the Chinesecharacter yang, which signifies "to feed," is composed of the keyfor "food" and the root for " sheep ." M ore surely, however, b e cause the attitude one should take toward one's nourishment i sthe same a s that adopted by the shepherd who allows his flock t oproceed a t i t s own pace, following i t s n o s e s , while he keeps aneye out for stragglers. This shepherd does not lead the animals inhis charge by marching at their head like the good pastor in theGospels, who guides hi, s flock across the desert to a lush and fer tile promised land. I s e e the shepherd i n t h e Chinese text as amaster who is content to follow' along behind his sheep , makingsure that no dissident motivation leads them astray and that theflock as a whole continues to move forward. Progress lies not inmoving toward a visible ideal but "merely," as I put it earlier, inremaining open to change.The question thus remains as broad as possible . It cannot bereduced to moralizing introspection (the famous "examination ofour conscience " one learns as a child) . Its sole concern is efficacy:to move forward, but with an openness to the interior dimension .This can be understood equally well in physiological terms or inmoral or psychological ones (what lags bebind in

me) , and it can be

interpreted as disposition, function, impetus, or feeling: what will

I have to "whip" in order to restore order - the common order ofmy vital evolution - and to keep moving forward? It can be interpreted in a medical or pathological register as the way cells ororgans seek to develop on their own, isolated from the functionof the whole organism, so that they no longer evolve with the restand either atrophy or turn cancerous . Or one can read it in a psychoanalytic mode: the neurotic remains attached to some eventin his past, s o that his psychic life ceases to evolve . Or he may

V I T

become

f"\J O U R I S H M E I'--I1

some emotion in the wake of a pathogenic

situation from which there is no exit. O r, in the most general

sense, inertia is characteristic of the way the libido is invested, forpsychoanalysis teaches us that it is always reluctant to abandon anold position for a new one and therefore tends toward paralysisthrough adherence and fixation.The Chinese interpretation, proceeding as usual , insists thatthe "way" of remaining

open to chang e requires valuing the median

and therefore opposing any deviation toward either extreme. The

prince's visitor eventually explains his meaning. Shan Bao livedamong the cliffs and drank only water. He did not seek profit andwas therefore not concerned with other men. He was therebyable to preserve his vital potential and reach the age of seventywithout losing his childlike complexion. Unfortunately, he crossedthe path of a hungry tiger, who, given the solitude in which ShanBao live d , easily devoured him. Then there was Zhang Yi: heassiduously visited every single noble mansion and at the age offorty he was already weak inside and caught a fever, from whichhe died. "One fed his inside, but the tiger ate his outside , whilethe other fed his outside, but illness attacked him from within .Neither man applied the whip to what lagged behind:' The pathof true nourishment falls between the two. Make no mistake ,however: the precise middle way is not equidistant from withdrawal, on the one hand, and social life , on the other, for such amiddle path would also lead inevitably to immobility and impedelife ' s renewal. The art of renewal instead lies in the alternationbetween tendencies. Confucius (whom Zhuangzi often p ortraysironically but who is here acknowledged as an expert on the justmiddle) offers this comment: withdrawal "to the point of hiding"and cutting off relations with others (which leaves us alone andhelpless when an external danger arises) is a mistake ; so is activityso external that we are constantly exposed (to pressure, intrigue,30

P R C": S E R V i N G

F R

E D O M

T O

A N G E

and so on) , deprived of relaxation, and eventually devoured by

our preoccupations. The wrong lies not in one position or theother but in the attachment to a position, whatever it happens tobe, to the point of becoming immobilized by it. We should notisolate ourselves in a certain position, lest we cut ourselves offfrom the opposite position and become deaf to calls to free ourselves from the position we happen to be in (SO as to continue toadvance) ; the alternative to this is necessity. Stuck in an extreme,life ceases to "feed" itself because it loses its virtuality, bogs down,becomes stalemated, and no longer initiates anything new.In a laconic passage 'at the beginning of his chapter on feedinglife , Zhuangzi makes the following point: "If you do good, do notseek renown . If you do evil, avoid punishment." 2 Ultimately itmatters little whether the action is "good" or "evil": the important thing is not to become so attached to a position as to remaintrapped by it. Even the good becomes a trap for vitality, not onlywhen it becomes routine but also when we become prisoners ofthe label. This, moreover, is what we find embodied immediatelythereafter in the

principal artery,

or

du,

which irrigates the back

from bottom to top and is the vessel through which energy flows.Why does our attention, once liberated from the endlessly spendthrift thirst for knowledge, focus instead on this artery as definingthe line and rule of life ? Because, as we have already discussed,this median artery has a regulative capacity that ensures respiratory constancy. And what is respiration but a continual incitationnot to dwell in either of two opposite positions - inhalation orexhalation? Respiration instead allows each to call upon the otherin order to renew itself through it, thus e stablishing the greatrhythm of the world's evolution, never absent from the Chinesemind: the alternation of day and night and the succession of theseasons. Thus respiration is not only the symbol, the image or figure, but also the

vector of vital n ourishment.

31

CHAPTER THREE

T o Fee d O ne' s Life/T o F o r c e

If we therefore isolate our "nat ure" from everything that encum

bers, conceals, or hobbles it; if we liberate ourselves from ideological perspectives and constructs , then we can restore our natureto what it truly and uniquely is: the vital p otential that we are .Since we do not believe in another life, we preserve this life, hereand now. Defying imposed values, we "preserve" life from illusory sacrifices and vain desires of glory and success. But whatdoes "preserve" mean when the obj e c t of preservation is life ?Does i t mean t o guard life a s w e would guard a treasure (our onlytreasure , since it is the one value that remains intact when thewhole fragile edifice collapses in rubble) ? Is it to cling to life, toretreat into it by making it our chief concern? Is it to care for lifeby protecting it against all forms of aggression and dissipation? Itis at this point that vital nourishment attains philosophical depth,setting itself apart from all the recipe s for vitality and takingon a dimension that is not strictly moral but more radical still.For to preserve our life is not to focus exclusively on it; nor is itto contrive to bottle up the life that is in us in order to save it foras long as possible from its despised opposite, death. To preserveour life is to plumb the depths of our life in search of the vitallogic of which loss is as legitimate a part as inception, expiration

V! T

as

and thus to

N O U R!S H M E NT

our life open to renewal through

the alternation of the global life process. "To feed one's life" doesnot mean to strive to enhance or prolong it, to seek to force lifeto sustain itself and endure . Indeed, it is only through de-willing,de-possession, that life can sustain itself and endure . This is thesense, bordering on a paradox, that must be carefully cultivated soas not to confuse it with other banal conception s . Hence closereading is essential.Let us therefore retrace our steps. In the progressive ascentthat allows the Old Man to "preserve" his youth and achieve"long life," we came across a statement that may seem surprising.The Old Man says that we must treat as "external, " and hence ofno importance for our vitality, not only "the world" and "things"but also "life:'! Without dwelling on this passage so as to preservethe tension inherent in the formula, I interpret this as meaningthat only if I liberate myself from [my concern with my] life willI achieve the "transparency of morning" and rise to the full potential o f my vitality, without further depletion or weakening.Similarly, when we we e asked to deliver ourselves from worldlyaffairs , whose power to retain and fixate impedes our dynamismand internal renewal, we were sub s e quently told, as if it wereself-evident, that "if we free ourselves from the cares of the world,our physical being will no longer be depleted," but, stranger still,that "if we abandon life, the quintessence of our vital b eing

Vin8)

will no longer b e lacking:'2 H ere, modern commentators vie to

diminish what they take to b e the bizarre meaning of this passage: "life , " it is claimed, should be understood in a weak senseas " futilities" and "petty matters:' This reading restores the expected conventional meaning: no one t akes offense at the ideathat it is enough to "give up" life 's pettiness and trifles (the betterto concern ourselves with life itself ) . If, however, we follow thetraditional commentators, we are confronted with a j arring literal34

T O

F E E D

O N E ' S

L I F E / T O

meaning: the recommendation is

F O R C E

O N E ' S

L I F E

to ai ve up life itself,

including

our preoccupation with our longevity, so that the "quintessence"

of our vitality will no longer be in short supply but will insteadreplenish itself.One passage in the Old Man's statement is even more incisive,on account of an antithesis: "That which kills life does not die; thatwhich engenders life is not born , " or so the translation usuallyruns, thus construing the subj ect of both halves of the antithesis supposedly the

dao,

the subj ect

p ar excellence - as

sovereign over

the life and death of all living things. 3 By virtue of this operation,the

dao becomes God (and the passage in question becomes mysti

cal ) . But a whole tradition of cqmmentary interprets this passage

quite differently. Recall that in Chinese, shena means both "to live"and "to engender":' "That which rids itself of life does not die; thatwhich seeks to live [or, better, lives to live ,

shena shena]

does not

live :'4 O r, as the gloss would have it, he who worries about preserving and prolonging life , and who "is therefore preoccupied"with his own life , who "values" and "clings" to it, "does not live:'H e who thinks only of his own life does not live , not so muchbecause this tiresome concern with his own life interferes with hisjoy of living but, more radically, because it obstructs and corruptsthe very source of his vitality. By contrast, according to the commentator Guo Xiang, he who achieves the "transparency of morning" after treating life itself as " external" no longer fears life anddeath but finds peace and tranquillity in whatever happens to him.His vitality "unfolds" on its own and avoids b ecoming "boggeddown" in any form of attachment, including the attachment tolife. H e is then free to respond to the only stimuli that come hisway, and thus he "lives" in the cool "transparency of morning:'sLet us therefore preserve this strong reading by retaining only theperspective of vitality (the Old Man still has a child's complexion)and refusing to theologize it as we do when we hypostasize the35

V I T A L

N O U R I S H M E N T

subj ect. O therwise, the sense o f the expression is immediately

assimilated by our Western tradition : G o d , the absolute p owerwho is neither b orn nor dies, can both kill and engender life . Suchare G o d ' s primary attributes, which the ology aims to define .Instead, if w e follow the Chinese interpretation, we raise ourselves to the absolute level of the great process, or

dao; we "aban

don" our own lives , we "eliminate" ("kill " ) all concern for ourown lives, and then we no longer die. We no longer instigate inourselves anything that can hobble our live s , whereas he whowants to live , "to live to live ," is no longer alive . In order to livelife fully (completely), we must not cling to life . If we do not takethis route , we would not be able to understand two statements:one at the b eginning of the chapter which states that "the height ofknowledge" is to live out the natural course of our days and not todie prematurely, and the other, a little farther on, which says thatthe "authentic" man does not know "love life" or "detest death,"for "neither does he rej oice at his coming" into the world "norrefuse to return" to the undifferentiated: "easy does he come" and" e asy d o e s he go ."6 Tll,fCre is n othing that he is not prepared to"welcome" when it comes. Likewise , there is nothing that he is notdisposed to "see off" when it goes. The "authentic" man acceptsthis coming and going and is life's gracious guest or host in eachcircumstance.H e who "lives to live" does not live . As always, the text shouldbe read as literally as possible and without fear of its radical implications: that he who clings to life and is always thinking abouthow "to live more" depletes the source of life within himself. Orthat he who is horrified by the idea of death, his own death, andseeks to ward against it thereby closes his life off to the naturalrespiration through which life constantly replenishe s itself inhim. H e who strives after life depletes his life proportionately. Hefocuses on his life and makes it his supreme and indeed his only

T O

F E E D

O N E ' S

L I F E / T O

F O R C E

O N E ' S

L I F E

value , for all other values are reduced to naught by comparison

the moment he learns that his life is threatened and that the dizzying abyss has opened beneath his feet. At bottom, he cares aboutnothing else: he wants to live, he lives to live, to live more , to liveat any price . But by clinging to life he loses the ability to embracelife in all its variability; he forgets how to allow life to come andgo within him, as the sea ebbs and flows without and as he inhalesand exhales the vital breath within . H e loses the knack of "welcoming" the influx of life and "seeing off" the efflux in a single,unified, never-ending gesture of solicitation and compensation.He thus freezes the life within him, paralyzes it, and by his ownaction hastens its end. Clearly Zhuangzi would have had little usefor the self-help formulas that unwittingly reveal a fear of agingand death and try desperately to ward them off. Too much concern with life and anxiety at the idea of losing it ultimately turnsagainst it.Chinese thought teaches us at every turn that one will neverattain the exact center by "holding" or clinging to the Middle (thesupreme value of the Confucians) because to cling is to freeze andimmobilize and thus to miss the always-moving point of equilibrium, of regulation .7 Nor is it by clinging to the Void (the supremevalue of the Daoists) that we achieve emptiness, for then we reifyit as if it were fullness, its opposite, and thus lose the perpetuallyanimating effect of vacuity. 8 Similarly, it is not by grasping at lifeor becoming obsessed with it that we learn to "feed" it. If Zhuangzi elevates the idea of the vital to an absolute, and indeed becausehe does so, he cannot treat it as an obj ect of targeted intentionality and possessive will. Life , like God, fundamentally permeatesand transcends us. We cannot possess God exclusively but canonly wish that his grace b e bestowed upon us. The same goes forlife, which we cannot possess for ourselves alone.The other great ancient Daoist text, the Laozi, sets this forth as37

V I T A L

N O U R I S H M E N T

a principle: "The reason why Heaven and Earth are able to endureis that they do not live for themselves. This is how they becomecapable of longevity:'9 "To live by oneself"b or "for oneself" is theLaozi's way of saying that one is preoccupied with one's own lifeand thinks only of it. Heaven and earth, which give generously ofthemselves to feed others, do not seek longevity for themselves,and that is why they "endure :' Living is not an aim in the sensethat I want to live, to "live to live ," evermore , at any price; it is,rather, a result, just as elsewhere in the Laozi we learn that it isnot "by showing off" that w e "gain renown" or "by imposing ourselves" that we "become illustrious :'l0 Regardless of whether thedesired result is longevity, glory, or success, it must come abouton its own . It must follow from the initial condition s , includingb o th the process upon which we embark and the resources weinvest, rather than be sought after as such. Any effort we make tobring about the result is wasteful and stands in the way of theadvent

sp onte sua

of the desired outcome . H e who seeks to force

the result expends his potential. This maxim can be read quitebroadly: in the end, it is only to the extent that "we do not seek to

be great" that we can " ahieve greatness:'l1 Conversely, when we

see people who exhaust their energy, we know that they have attached "too much importance" to "living to live"

(sheng sheng) :

they squander their strength when they should "husband" it so as

to preserve the vital potential they contain within them. 12 It is badto " enhance" or " force" life

(yi sheng),C b ecause our " spirit" then

uses up our energy to enhance our strength, so that we embark

upon the cycle in which increase is the prelude to enfeeblementand apogee is the prelude to decline, and life ends in "prematuredeath:'13What we have here, then, is a maxim stated as an absolute principle of existence that is disturbingly similar to a well-known pas "

T O

O N E ' S

L I F E / T O

F O R C E

O ['-J E ' S

L i F E

sage o f the Gospel. It is so similar that one wonders if some

anthropological truth is b eing expressed, a truth couched, in theone case, in terms of the vital and, in the other, in terms of a division of the world into two realms : the here below which intersects with longevity, and the hereafter which corresponds to lifeeverlasting. In any event, the antithetical power is the same , as isthe way the attachment to life turns against life. "The man wholoves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in thisworld will keep it for eternal life : ' 14 Here, "life , " which translatesthe Greek psuche, or "soul," but corresponds to the Hebrew nifesh,refers in the Greek of the Septuagint and the New Testament bothto man the living individual and to that which constitute s his"self, " j ust as in the Daoist te xt . What is this thing that has butone meaning, that must ultimately be construed in just one way,whether it be in Greek, H ebrew, or Chinese? What is this thing at once transreligious, transcultural, translinguistic, and transhistorical (because it makes its appearance beyond, or rather priorto, the various articulations that different languages deploy) that might ultimately allow us to dispen s e with any "point ofview" and grasp that which constitutes the common core , theessence of life? It is this: what is "specific" to life is precisely itsability to elude its own grasp. This cannot be stated as a preceptexcept in a contradictory mode: he who loves life will lose it; andone must renounce life if one wants to live it. Thus is it written inthe gospel of John: "Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the groundand dies, it rernains only a single seed. But if it dies, it producesmany seeds:'15 This passage might express the irreducible aspectof life that is compatible with life in all its forms, taking in andsetting side by side the merely nutritive life of the vegetal and thefate of man . Thus, looking again at Zhuangzi and translating stillmore literally, we have " H e who kills life does not die ; he wholives to live does not live:'39

V I T A i_

N 0 U R I S H l\;1

N T

where the difference arises that turns

NO\'17 it becomeseach of these thoughts irrevocably toward its distinctive destiny.In other ''lords, we can see how a perception so radical that it iscommon to both the East and the West forks into two distinctconceptions , each of which now develops its own peculiar patterns and issues . In the Gospel of J ohn, the kernel of wheat jumpsfrom the realm of the concrete into that of the figurative . To reiterate the overarching parallel described earlier: the seed symbolizes Christ, the bread of life , whose Passion, prefigured in thepassage quoted above , will guarantee the salvation of mankind.The foo d envisioned here , then, is food for the spirit. In the Daoist text, by contrast, there is no such gap b etween two differentlevels of meaning, and the logic of renunciation of life (or clingingto life) remains entirely within the realm of the vital. This pro duces a common logic of "effectivenes s , " who s e fruits becomeapparent in a number of areas. Furthermore , it also yields a strategy. Laozi, by allowing the paradox fre e play, develops his mostinfluential idea: in order to win at war, one must not strive forabsolute strength but r ther j oin "weakness" to strength, b ecausethe good general is not "martial" and water dominates the worldby its "baseness:' 16 In morality, great virtue "is not virtuous ." Itdoes not pursue virtue directly (nominally) but rather allows it toflow; lesser virtue, which "does not quit virtue," which attachesitself nominally and minutely to virtue , "is not virtuous," b ecauseit fails from the b eginning to adopt the generous attitude ofvirtue , choo sing instead to b e meticulous and punctilious. 17 Inaesthetics (though b e ar in mind that these distinctions of sub j ect matter are derived from our Western tradition ) , a great work"avoids coming into the world entirely" and fulfills its goals allthe more by renouncing the ambition to fulfill them. 18 This is whysketches are so valued - in a sketch, a work abandons itself so asto remain a work in progress rather than show itself off o sten-

T O

F E E D

O N E ' S

L I F E / T O

F O R C E

O N E ' S

L I F E

tatiously. And just as the best way to achieve an effect is to re

nounce all ambition to impose or prescribe one, so that instead offorcing the effect, one clears the way as much as possible for itsemergence, so, too, do we clear the way for life to come by renouncing our attachment to it and refraining from any attempt to"enhance" or "force" it.But what does it mean, exactly, to " enhance" or "force" life ?As Zhuangzi defines it in a conversation with the sophist Hui Shi,to "enhance" and "force" life is to add a supplement to what lifeis in its natural course by giving in to the subj ective temptation

(qing) d

"of the for and against" or "approbation- aversion:' 19 One

"forces" life by defending one argument and refuting another, as

in the case where one conceptualizes the coexistence of the qualities "white" and "hard" in the same stone (a favorite theme of thesophists) , or when one likes one thing and detests another - forexample, liking life and detesting death. Consequently, one "injures" one's individual self, which is embarrassed by these disjunctions and exhausted by their weight. Instead, one should allow thevital capital to "conform constantly" to that which "comes in thisway on its own,"e

sponte sua,

without pressure or even interfer

ence - as well as without resistance (as

Zhuangzi

puts it later, in

his most common leitmotif ) . Thus the sage feeds his life withoutadding anything that might excite or corrupt it, contenting himself with "going with the flow" while being aware that the desirefor knowledge is an "unhealthy offspring," contact with men is"glue," virtue is a way of "binding" oneself (excessively) to others,

and, finally, the success- effect is a trinket or "commoditY: '2o Since

he "follows no plan," what need has he for knowledge? Since he

"cuts nothing," what need has he for glue? Since he "loses nothing, " what need has he for virtu e ? And finally, since he "tradesnothing," what need has he for trinkets and commodities?The sage does not allow his c onduct to be encumbered by

V l T A L

stuck in

N O U R I S

M E N

down in virtues, or hob-

bled by success. These four negatives are precisely what Zhuangzi

names (to translate literally) " the foo d of heaven ." f H ere onceagain is proof, now in magisterial form, that our terms must b emade clear i n order even

to be able to begin t o translate, for other

wise "food of heaven" will lead us seriously astray. Everything we

have learned thus far, including the most recent p oint, shows thatthis " food of heaven" is to be understood as the antithesis of a" food fro m H e aven" b estowed upon us by some transcendentpower - whether it be the food of truth in Plato or manna or thebody of the Christ from the Old and New Testaments - to satisfya human need (hunger for truth or love ) . The nourishment we aretracking is not a supplement; rather, it consists in ridding ourselves of all "supplements" who only lead us "to force life :' "Tofeed our life celestially" is to free life from everything that weighsus down - be it knowledge acquired , agreements made, virtuesadopted, or successes won - and to restore it to its sole injunction- immanence.

CHAPTER F O U R

V a c a ti o n s : Fin d ing He aven

in Our s e l ve s

This lesson i s w orth meditati ll g on: when I translate literally

"food of heaven" (tian JU) from the Chinese, I immediately andinfallibly evoke a meaning directly opposed to the Chinese . In an

cient China (from the advent of the Zhou, a millennium before

the common era) , "heaven" was a notion that gradually supplantedthe idea of God, represented as " Lord above ," Shangdi. Heaven,with its "steady" course and especially its diurnal and seasonalalternations, 1 came to embody for the thinkers of Antiquity, andfor Zhuangzi in p articular, the natural regulation of the greatworld process, which is consistent and thus constantly renewsitself, engendering all that exists. The word thus denoted theimmanent

source

of processivity itself, which, through its invari

able reactivity to " E arth" (yin and yang) , is the n ever - endingfountain of life . (I as an individual, however, have only limitedaccess to it, which is why it is transcendent.) S o when Zhuangzi discusses "heavenly food" or recommends "bringing (some)heaven into myself," he means simply (that is, without moral orreligious inflation) that I ought to make contact with that part ofmyself which is pure process (natural and spontaneous) throughthe lib eration from everything superimp o s e d by the "inducedp oint of view"> or bias of an individual ego. For the ego, caught up43

V I T A L

N O U R I S H M E N T

as it is in the play of for and against and in the proj ection of itspredilections and aversion s , is prevented from perceiving theworld's pure injunction . The natural reactivity that renews lifeperpetually is thereby obscured, leaving it in confusion and embarrassment. The vital influx becomes ensnared in the "ego" andexhausts itself. So if there is any ("heavenly" ) "nourishment"here , it still does not rise to the figurative level, for no level ofexistence is involved other than the organic. Or, to put it anotherway, this "heavenly" nourishment is needed if I am to truly develop my fundamental organic b eing, for only by eliminating allencumbering affects can I adequately respond to and satisfy thevital inj unction that runs through me and that comes to me directly from the immense source of reactivity that lies within thegreat world process as a whole rather than from the narrow orbof my desires and repulsions . I link my life directly to the sourceof its immanence .With the very important contrast between "heaven" and "man,"Zhuangzi distinguishes between two levels or regimes of vitality:one is the fundamental ("heavenly" ) regime, which I discoverwithin me and can begin to feed as soon as my aims cease to get inthe way and my causality-governing knowledge no longer interferes (" eliminate the knowledge and the caus e , " the text alsoadmonishes) . 2 The other is the reductively "human" regime , inwhich my vitality is "coerced" and debilitated by all the prejudicesthat impinge on it, whether they stem from desire or knowledge.A distinction must be made between, on the one hand,

stimulus

[ excitation ] , which is external, sporadic, and temporary, and which

impinges constantly on my affective being, buffeting or consuming me, and, on the other hand,

incitement [incitation] ,

which is

fundamental and which, stripped of my concepts and option s ,

connects me completely to the ceaseless turmoil that keeps theworld in motion. Clearly, "heavenly" nourishment is that which44

V A C A T i O N

F i N D I N G

H !\ V

comes from this incitement. Another

i N

R S E L \I

the two

to

regimes of reactivity is the following: on the one hand, when the

"force" that spurs me on

(ji) b is not well grounded or connected

to th e natural world process (but is instead limited to a superficial

reaction dictated by my own point of view or desire and thereforeweakly motivated) , the expenditure of vitality within me is substantial; on the other hand, when the "force " that incites me andgets me moving is the same one that keeps the world moving as awhole and connects me to its energy, the reaction that sets me inmotion demands nothing while carrying me along and vitalizingme. "When desire is pr?found, the force of heaven is superficial,"Zhuangzi says laconically. ) In other words, when thedesire) is strong, the

stimulus

(of

incitement that connects me to the source

of

vitality itself comes through only weakly because it is attenuated

by its stimulative trappings . Zhuangzi neither morally condemnsdesire nor returns to an ascetic ethos; he merely observes that if Imaintain a superficial stimulus through the use of my will, motivation will come at my own expense. It is up to me (that is, to myvitality) to feed my desire. By contrast, when the force animatinglife comes from the "heaven" within me, that is, when I overcomemy individual perspective and embrace the natural process, I nolonger n e e d my will (I am no longer reaching out

toward any

thing) . The world as a whole sets me in e -motion; it reacts through

me and unfolds my path before me as it proceeds.Hence this is presumably the only b ehavioral choice - neitherreligious nor moral - availabl e . But without insisting, strictlyspeaking, on conversion (since there is no "turning toward" another order of value or reality), such a choice nevertheless requires avigorous unburdening.

Zhuan8zi calls for this

constantly - I must

move b eyond the epidermic, personal level of motivation if I am

to p enetrate the world's incitement. Rather than brave windsand tides to bring my ship safely into port (my death) , I plunge4-5

V I T A L

t-J O U R ! S H M

into the endless nux

trati on andto carry (me) along.

N1

embrace

of concen-

of advent and disappearance, and allow it

Zh uanazi

posits an alternative : it is either

"heaven" that I "open up" in myself or the "human :'4 O f course , if

I open up a part of "heaven" in myself, that is, if I descend to theradical stage of motivation at which the vital process within b e c o m e s transparent, " I then increase my capacity for life ." If, o nthe other hand, I "open" the "human" by remaining at the levelof pure stimulus and volition, that is, at the level of the artificialand the "forced," I injure and "despoil" my vitality. The only useful knowledge , then, is that which teaches us to distinguish thetwo levels of "heaven" and "man," as we are told at the outset.5

Zhuanazi describes at length this other regime of reactivity, which

is not the limited one of conception-volition but the one in whichthe individual b eing, rooted in the world's turbulence, allowsitself to be transported and used.All these formulas are emblematic of wisdom and must be readas offering a rigorous description of a fundamental form of beingin-the -world that has been stripped of the usual rigidities, obstructions, and diminutions and thus restored to its primitive intensityand raised to its full potential (of vitality) . The life of the s age ,Zhuangzi says, coincides with the "course of heaven, " meaningthat his b ehavior is determined solely by the fundamental process,by incitement alone, to the point where he does not need to act byand for himself and therefore does not have to "force " the life thatlives within him . 6 "At rest, he shares the virtue of the yin ; inmotion, he partakes of the spirit of the yang:' In other words, whenreactivity is at work in the world it suffuses his conduct and gUideshim directly. Or, put differently, "when incit e d, he respond s , ""taking action only when he cannot do otherwis e ." Echoing the"passivity" of the creature opening itself up to divine grace (as inChristian Quietism, but without transcendence) , the o p enness

V A C A T i O N

and

F.7 1 N O l N G

H E !;:", V E f'-l

I N

O U R

E !.. V E S

of the sage " embraces the coherence of heaven" and

vibrates in unison with it. Since he is in phase with this imma

nence, the effect comes of its own accord, and even without hisknowledge, just as our organic functions usually operate withoutaim or intention. From this comes an idealized portrait, anotherdream for humanity: the sage does not need "to cogitate or makeplans:' He does not need to go out of his way. "He is radiant" without glowing or burning (like fire, which consumes itself ) . By thesame token, "people trust him without the necessity of a contract:'The contractual "glue" becomes unnecessary. By "placing himselfin harmony with the vi]'tue of heaven," which is eminently natural,he is no longer hobbled by "men" or "things , " by "natural elements" or "spirits." In short, he exhibits n o habitual pattern, noresidue at odds with his nature . "Sleeping, he does not dream, " and"awake , he does not fret:'Would it b e worth while to read this ancient Chinese thinker ifwe could not decipher, beneath the absolutized figure of the sageand beyond these conventional motifs of "heaven" and "man," thefundamental - and more common - experience that he succeedsin describing? Would it be worth it if we could not go beyond lazyequivalences (such as rendering the Chinese "heaven" by the English "heaven" ) and exploit the Chinese notion in its own context?Disrupting and disorienting our thinking opportunely liberatessomething that has hitherto remained unthought. Zhuangzi, byinviting us to explore the "processive , " intrinsically reactive foundation that he designates as the basis of the real, now rescues theideas of "getting back to basics" and "natural self- sufficiency"from the theoretical inconsistency and ideological debility inwhich they have lately wallowed. He gives us the concept of a truevacation, that is, of vacation understood in a way that is not solelynegative (that is, not working) . When we read Zb uangzi's words47

V I T ,A. L

N O U R 1 S H f\Il

I"J T

appropriate.

in this new

For is not "to b e on vacation" precisely to give fre e rein

throu8hout

our being (in such a way as to bring home the inten

sive force of throu8hout)

i ty ,

to a more solidly rooted radical reactiv

a reactivity that can circulate more freely because it has been

stripped of its usual carapace of obligation and convention? Is not

"getting back to basics" (to resort to a rather clumsy but inescapable expression) a chance to allow ourselves to be guidedsolely by

incitement,

freed from all febrile stimuli and in contact

with a more intimate source of energy?

Indeed, when it comes to "vacations , " we must concede thatWesterners may have acquired politically the right to take themand socially developed the corresponding vacation "commodity,"but we still do not understand what a vacation is. For nowhere inour philosophy is the concept elaborated (except perhaps indi rectly in Montaigne) . We still lack the " ontology." Or, rather, welack the

deontoloBJ, and it is precisely here that the

Chinese notion

of' "heaven" can be put to good use. The previously quoted de

scription of' the sageis role continues as follows: it is under thesole incitement of the natural functions yin and yang, togetherwith inner "emptying" and "detachment" (the two go together:emptying of concern and detachment from affairs) , that we at lastfree ourselves from the reductive perspective of the "human :'7Then , "forgetting" (an important term in

Zhuan8zi)

our "focal

izations" and points of view, we "align ourselves with the great

natural transformation:' Freeing the vital from its various impediments , we again "feed" the "heaven" in us. This formula at leastavoids falling into the flabbiness and weakness of the atheoreticalwhile at the same time refraining from constructing too much andlosing the experience of the thing itself: we take vacations inorder to "feed life:'

V A C A T I O N S :

F I N D I N G

H E A V E N

I N

O U R S E L V E S

With one stroke , we are also provided with a concept that outlin esthe fundamental relationship between the artist and his material,be it the sculptor and the stone or wood he carves, or the paintersetting up his easel before the mountain (Sainte-Victoire) to whichhe tirelessly returns each morning. For how are we to think aboutwhat everyone knows, namely, that the work will succeed only ifthe artist manages to evoke a naturalness prior to both technicalknow-how and idea, by connecting with the intrinsic naturalnessof his subj ect and material, which thereby become "partners" inhis creation? Consider the following notions. " Openness," or "ecstasy, " remains caught for us in the folds of its religious back

Erschlossenheit and Paul Claudel's co

naItre). " Communion" (with natu re) remains inseparable from the

ground (as do H eidegger's

Romantic sensibility that thematized it because it does not link up

with any genuine ontology (for which its rhetorical hyperboleclumsily compensates). "Authenticity" is not based on any

ad hoc

concept of interiority capable of ensuring its consistency. "Ingen

uousness" and "naIvete" are entirely too p sychological . The listgoes on. Western thought struggles here to express somethingthat it nevertheless knows empirically (and, I believe , phenomenologically) . All these terms miss the mark and reveal the sametheoretical weakness because they remain bloated with subj ectivity, having failed to locate in the creative process itself the congruence with the intrinsic naturalness of its obj ect.

Zhuangzi

describes a carpenter who creates a bell stand that

amazes everyone who sees it as though it were the work of a god.8

Questioned about his "technique , " he at first denies that he hasany. He goes on to explain , though, that after the incrementalprocess of withdrawal that leads him to banish from his mind first"stipends and rewards," then "praise and blame," and, finally, "toforget" even "his body with its four limbs" and the king's court,he " enters the forest" with "concentrated skill" and "all external49

V I T A L

N O U R I S H M E N T

concerns dissipated:' He then contemplates the "heavenly nature

[of a tree] whose shape is perfect," and " only then does he formhis vision of the work" and "set to work:' Once again, the formulais lapidary but adequate: "With heaven [open in him] he mingleswith [the ] heaven [of the tre e ) :' In other word s , h e unburdenshimself of everything that weighs him down and impedes the natural process working within him - his incitement - and connectswith the natural process responsible for the splendid growth ofthe tre e . This thought is expressed phenomenologically and notpsychologically: having completely unleashed his own capacityfor growth, prior to all affect and intention , he immediately becomes complicit with the capacity for growth that the tree hasrevealed by rising so maj estically. Henri Matisse offered an excellent commentary on this subject in his discussion of Chinese teaching: rather than draw by imitating as you are taught to do inschool, "when you draw a tree, try to feel as though you start atthe b ottom and climb with it:'9There is, on the otherj hand, something that Zhuangzi does notsee, something that eludes him, that his text ignores - but uponwhich the West, for its part, recognized and assigned a code name,a password, its ultimate identity: love (which the West conceived,incidentally, only against the backdrop o f God) . Let the "absolute" be not only that in which all things dissolve and in whoseunity they communicate (the

dao ) , 10 but also that which sets itself

up in a figure and even a certain face. Let tension no longer call

for regulation through relaxation, but let inspiration be infinite,

and let affective force monopolize everything and ab sorb life

completely as one consecrates ( con- "sacre, " co-"sacreds" ) oneself

to the other, that is, to the other

qua "other" (and not the other of

the sam e , yin and yang) . Let focalization no longer be an obstacle

but that from which plenitude wells up, and let it no longer ex50

V A C A T I O N S :

F I N D I N G

H E A V E N

I N

O U R S E L V E S

clude but totali z e . For what, ultimately, can the nature of this"heaven" that one "opens up" in oneself b e ? Western literature(and it is chiefly in literature, rather than in philosophy, that thisis imagined) discovers this in the Passion and the gift, which areintentionally voluntary, heroic, sublime , and carried to the pointof sacrifice (of an orgasmic paroxysm? ) . The Chinese thinker, onthe other hand, envisions heaven as the full regime of natural pro cessivity. H e sees it as the refuge of his vitality, to the point ofmaking himself invulnerable to external elements and dangers: hepasses over the vestiges of shamanism in the miraculous ability towalk on fire without feling the heat, or to soar above the worldwithout feeling faint. 11 Zhuangzi describes a simple experience: adrunken man falls from a carriage . What is it that allows this manto suffer injury rather than death when nothing about his physicalconstitution distinguishes him from others? The answer is that heclimbs into the carriage without n oticing and falls out the sameway, and "because the fear of death does not penetrate his innermost recesses," he is moved bythan

cifJective reactivity.

processive reactivity

alone, rather

If it is true that the absence of affect in a

state of drunkenness preserves us from inj ury and allows us to

achieve an integrity of our whole being, then, Zhuangzi concludes,it is all the more true if we achieve such integrity with respect to"heaven": "Because the Sage withdraws into heaven, nothing cando him harm:'Now, the important point here is that this is the basis on whichZhuangzi conceived our relations to others and from which hedrew the only elements from which morality could be constructed:if we connect only with natural incitement, we cut ourselves offfrom all affective reactivity, and others no longer have any powerover us. By the same token, if we purge ourselves of all intentionality, no one can hold this against us: we do not attack the swordthat wounds us or the tile that falls on our head. 1 2 If a drifting boat

\/ I T A L

collides with my

N O U R i S H

I will

N T

if no one is aboard the

other boat, but if there is someon e , I will addre s s that person

rudely and m ove quickly to insults . 1 1 Conflict arises at the level ofthe volitional-affective self. As soon as we move beyond that stage ,or, rather, as soon as we regress within ourselves to a point prior tothat stage , we can get endless things from others without resortingto force , as well as prepare ourselves to counter their aggression,since they will no longer even think of confronting us.Such are the conditions and consequences of feeding ("heavenly" ) life. The first case (getting things from others) is illustratedby the tax collector at the city gates who receives money fromtravelers without having to demand it or even ask them for it. 14How does he do it? He "collects," to be sure, but "vaguely," without calculating or contriving. People may say that he is "dull" (forthe person who knows how to ke ep his inner life intact is outwardly dull ) . While concentrating on his task, he

ciffectively to

does not react

anyone, neither to the " violent" who refuse to pay

nor to the "compliant" ones who pay as best they can. He "greets

those who corne" and '; bids farewell to those who go," without" trying to prevent the latter from leaving or the former fromentering:' What does he do? Rather than withhold and spend (like

those who mistakenly cling to life), he proceeds as life itself pro

ceeds. H e grasps its processivity and natural reactivity and is constantly coming and going, like the ebb and flow of the tide, like theinhalation and exhalation of living things, content to greet and bidfarewell without stiffness or haste , without forcing anything andtherefore without trapping anything. Thus "he follows the roadthat each of us follows to the end of the self, " and his collectionscontinue unperturbed. His goal is achieved without effort becausehe leaves it to itself, without intervening or imposing his will.The second case (preparing oneself to counter aggression)takes us directly to feeding: the "feeding" or raising (the Chinese

C .q T 1 0 N S :

F i N D i N G

V E N

i f'J

O U R

E L V E S

word is the same: yang) of gamecocks . i s H ere we di scover a nc\v

itinerary of maturation, step by step, ten-day pcriod after ten-dayperiod. At first, the cock is still vain and swollen with pride, confident in its strength. Later, it still reacts to other cocks, as well asto shadows and noises. After that, its gaze is still too fierce, andthe bird is still too spirited. It is ready only when other cocks cancrow without provoking any "change" in its appearance. Lookingat it, you would say it was "made of wood." O nly then is it "fullytrained," and "other cocks won't dare face it but will turn andrun:' Because the trained cock does not react to the other birds,they no longer react to it and have no choice but to flee. At earlierstages in the process, the cock in training was still a subject (ofinitiative , of feeling, of attitud e ) , but now it is the others whobecome subjects for it and bear the burden and cost. It is tempting to think of this impassiveness as a moral stance, like the Stoic

ataraxia, but it is above all strategic (here in a parodic mode) . It is

also tempting to think that the capacity for combat means beingstronger than one's adversary and capable of beating him, but as

The Art if War teaches,

that strategy is costly in terms of energy

and inevitably risky. The true defense is to be able to forgo fight

ing, which means not being vulnerable to attack. This is achievednot by being stronger but by making oneself inaccessible . Moreover, by d e - re acting within myself and turning myself into a"wooden cock," I not only protect myself from his aggression butalso deprive him of his own reactivity (the apparent source of hisstrength) and thereby neutralize him . He is crippled and p aralyzed by my lack of respon s e , while I am able to preserve myenergy.

53

CHAPTER F I VE

With o u t " S o u l "

If we wish to examine the (cultural) conditions for the possibility

of thought - as I have done here - rather than at the propositionalcontent as it subsequently develops , a remark of Zhuangzi's becomes relevant and might even serve as an epigraph for this book:"In any discussion, some things go undiscussed:' l In other words,prior to any discussion and to the antagonistic positions a discussion may provoke , there exists - in the image of the

daD,

or the

unitary process out of which all b eings realize and differentiate

themselves - a background understanding. The most diverse andeven opposing points of view are able to stake out their distinctivebackground. I see such a background

beca use they share this

understanding, for instance , at

P}wedo, where

Socrates b egins with the idea

p ositions with mutual comprehension

the beginning of the

that the soul and body separate at death . He introduces this not asa conclusion arrived at in the course of discussion but as an already self- evident proposition: at the moment of death, the soulstands apart from the body. "It isolates itself," and the body, for itspart, does the same . 2 Simmias , his interlocutor, does not think toquestion this. Only later, on the topic of the nature of the soul andits immortality, does debate begin. In order for such a backgroundunderstanding to exist, the idea of a source of life separable from55

\! I T ft L

and

the

N O U R I S H M E N T

autonomous with respect to it must have

been formulated much earlier and assimilated quite broadly. This

mode of thinking is already evident in Homer, well before Plato

cum parallelpsuche and thumos that is developed in the Iliad: the thu

deploys it. It is already implicit in the distinction

between

mos of the soldiers in the siege of Troy, the "heart" that dwells intheir b o s o m , the source of their energy and courage , is " d e stroyed" and "broken" by death, while the

p suche o r " soul," asso

ciated with the head, subsists as the visible but impalpable imageor

eidolon

of the once-living being. "Like a phantom in a dream,"

"vaporous," it "flies away."> It reaches its destination "in Hades:'

Only later, most notably in Pindar and the gnomic poets, do wefind such a principle of life implicated in perception , thought, andfeeling, as life and consciousness are j oined in a single entity. Atthis point, the soul is born as a crucial anthropological representation that philosophy henceforth takes to b e " self- evident:' Simmias, debating with Socrates , does not think of questioning itsexistence.In essence, at any ra t e , the game had already been won withthe opening words of the

Phaedo,

since "soul" was now in place.

The Chinese tradition, by contrast, thought first of feeding "life"

rather than elaboration on the "soul" because it did not establishas sharp a separation between a principle of life and organic being.It did not assign the "head" a different fate from the rest of thebody and instead situated the spirit in the heart

(xin, which is usu

our attention to the "belly," the seat of nutrition, where vitality isconcentrated.4 Conversely, in Plato's

Timaeus, the head, the "most

divine" part of the body, is what matters most. The purpose of therest of the body is merely to " support" the head.s The fact thatChinese thought did not conceive of this thing we call a soul as adistinct entity with a destiny of its own and with essence as its

W I T H O U T

" S O U L "

vocation has enormous implications. What does it mean, then, to

think, in the most general way (regarding the status of "man," hisinternal makeup , his fate, morality, and so on) , if we cannot availourselves of the notion of the soul, or at least (especially since wehave been wary of it for centuries now) if we

can no lon8er presup

pose such a notion made possible? To eschew interest in

the soul,

as Western thinkers commonly do today, is to ignore the residual

effects on our thought that its isolation as an idea inevitably andperhaps indelibly produced. We remain dependent on the seeffects, no matter how hard or indeed how relentlessly we seekto eliminate them . Even if Aristotle had little to say about theimmortality of the soul - and, indeed, he seems to have had nointerest in it - and even if he con eived of the soul as situated ona level possessed by all living things, he nevertheless used it as amental tool for conceptualizing the "cause" and "principle" of thebody, at once

aitia

and

arche.

Consequently, the body was hence

forth conceptualized only as "matter"

(hule)

in- formed by soul.

Even if it was claimed - by the Stoics, for example - that the soulitself had to be corporeal in order to exist, it nevertheless remaineda distinctive principle because of its emblematic status and motiveforce.The "nevertheless" I just used in the last sentence will remainpermanent. Even though, since the Kantian revolution, soul hasdisappeared from the philosophical stage , having been exiled todiscourses on faith, the notion has nevertheless found its way intotechnical language by way of its Greek doublet: the "psychic,"whose pertinence we can hardly abandon Gust as we fall back onthe Greek root when we no longer dare to speak of morality andinstead invoke " e thics" ) . With its parallel lexicons , Westernthought has a convenient way of making shifts, or rather slippagesand jumps, in discourse, without assuming full responsibility orjustifying completely these transitions . I slough off the baggage57

V i T A L

N O U R I S

M E

the term "soul" carries on the Latin side or shunt it off into therealm of the "literary" so as to maintain a halo around the "soulfulsupplement" in compensation for the overly rigorous determinations of science . And so questions like "inanimate obj ects, haveyou a soul?" arise. At the same time, I retain its connotations onthe Greek side. In other words, though I may doubt I have a soul,I will not doubt the entity I call my "psyche." A dubious operation . . . . Psychoanalysis itself, in distancing itself from religiOUSdiscour s e , may forget that it remains a descendant o f this immense cultural

a priori, this apparatus called the soul. As such it is

susceptible to the same slippages as " science" (the " science of thesoul , " or

Seelenkunde),

which Western culture has put in place.6

We no longer "think the soul," we no longer argue about it, but

we inevitably think about how this idea unfolds in accordancewith its legacy. We still think along the lines it laid down longago. It belongs to an older, "archaeological" stratum of our mental landscape, and acts as a controlling idea that defines our epis temic axioms.From China - that is, using Chinese thought as a the oretical measuring stick (or observational device) - we will be able to gaugemore accurately what effect such a coalescence of notions mayhave had on the formation and evolution of Western thought. Theancient Chinese shared the idea of a separation of two distinctprinciples at death with Socrates but did not believe that a uniquesoul "withdrew into itself." Instead , the y held that subtle souls(plural) returned to heaven

(hun),'

while other, m ore corporeal

souls mingled with the earth. The older, more monistic idea wasthat a human individual's subtle soul could leave the body, evenwhen the person was still alive , and that the shaman had thepower to call such vagabond souls back hom e . 7 This idea wasclearly quite marginal to the thought of Zhuangzi, however, even58

IN 1 T H O U T

" S 0 U L ';

though he was not far removed from this shamanic culture . Commenting on the "course of heaven" to which man returns when heconnects with the natural process, he merely notes that "the spiritof the Sage is then pure" and that his " soul"

(hun)

is "not tired ."

Note, however, that although the "soul" is mentioned here , it is

within the context of a discussion of vital p otential and the conservation of energy. 8 Otherwise, Zhuangzi limits himself to various scattered designations , none of which can be regarded asdefinitive . Rather than being impositions of an analytic point ofview, these are more in the nature of circumlocutions that play asymbolic role. For instanr:e, he refers at various points to a "Treasury" or " Spiritual Receptacle" where worry about vicissitudesmust not trespas s ; to the "Terrace of Spirit s , "b a medical term ,which must remain "concentrated" and "unimpeded"; more simply, to a "house ," or innermost self, from which possible dangersmust be barred; and, in still more elementary terms , to the "interior" of the physical form and skeleton, as opposed to the "exterior" of the physical being, about which one should not worry.9Let us begin, therefore, by taking note of this semantic diversity.In the West, by contrast, the legacy "soul" owes its force to thefact that a single , inescapable term took hold, even if its meaningis hardly unequivocal.Chinese thinkers did, however, perceive in the human persona principle of animation distinct from the physical being. Whenit was not thinking of this principle in terms of its function inknowledge and moral perception (as

xin ,

or spirit, which it lo

cated in the heart) , however, it usually used the term "quintes

sence"

(jing, the "refined" o r "subtle" ) with which I began . As we

have seen, it is essential that "the physical form operate at full

capacity" and that "quintessence replenish itself." l0 Zhuangzi'sFrench translator renders the term as dme, or "soul," 11 but bear inmind that although it is indeed paired with the physical form, it59

V I T

ne vertheless refers(the "spirit of

1_

f' 0 U

H M E N

any

or refined matter

" for example) and cannot therefore sustain

any sort of metaphysical rupture . Associated with the notion of

the "spiritual , " it also enters into a more stable compound, a" spiritual quintessence"

(jing sheny

that is supp o s e d to make

things "as pure as snow" 12 and "return to the Without- Beginning"

rather than deplete itself in worldly affairs. It "unfolds in everydirection , " " there is nothing that it d o e s not attain , " and "itsname is like divinity." B As is only fitting, no sooner does an ideaof "soul" and its infinity begin to take shape than "divinity" (however loosely construed here) d accommo date s itself to the newconfiguration. With a little patience, we can see something evenmore interesting emerge . This other possibility of thought, whichZhuangzi did, in fact, notice and toward which he seems here totake a step, nevertheless remains closed, since a short while laterthis " quintessence" falls back into the more rooted perspectiveof the vital and its organic refinement. The two terms (jing andshen) are also frequently used alongside one another to denoteddJerent degrees of puriication, a verbal indication of their proces sive character, which shuts off the p o ssibility o f a n y form o fhypostasis. 14There is, therefore, no such thing as " soul" (as substance, posing the question of its existence) but only a process of animation ,which, by way of progres sive purification and disengagement,

rifine myself (or

animated I become. Thus to "feed" the "quintessence" in myself (yangjing) means simply (that is, without any metaphysical overlay) toleads to full vitality. In other words, the more I

"decant , " "unbind , " or "disencumber" myself ) , the more

sharpen my capacities and keep myself in shap e . Similarly and

analogously, to "feed" the "spiritual" in myself (yang

shen)

usually

means to relax and rest my spirit. Although the first translation of

senne ," eyen in association the two terms remain far too f1uid and,being more intensive than descriptive, they are far too qualitativeto form a stable entity upon which a form of "analytic" knowledgecould be constructed by typologizing and topologizing.Much more is at stake here than a semantic disparity betweenChinese and Indo- European forms of expression. " Soul" inaugurates a whole different destiny for thought. Without a soul constituted in partnership with the invisible , we would not have beenable to conceive of an intimate relationship b etween man andGod (prayer, for exampl'e , quickly atrophied in Chinese civilization ) . And without a soul taking ll feeling into itself so that itcan reach out through the felt toward the infinite, we would nothave been able to erect love as an absolute of the human adventure (Chinese thinkers conceived of love solely as emotion, or asplaying a sexual role in cosmic regulation) . Furthermore, withouta soul splitting man between himself and his principle , we wouldnot have been able to bestow such importance on the monologueof consciousness with itself:

Oh psyche! Oh,

my

soul. 15

Nor would

we have been able to celebrate the inner voice (there is no evi

dence of this interior monologue in pre- Buddhist China) . Zhuangzi tries hard to discover within human reality an order differentfrom that of the physical and tangible, an order in which we "keepthe Original" in ourselves so as to cease to feel fear, or in whichwe " dominate the whole univers e " and "gather up all beingswithin ourselves," using the "physical skeleton" as a mere "dwelling place" and taking the " audible" and "visible" as pure "phenomena" and regarding " the spirit as never dying:' . . . " H e canchoose the day he will rise [up out of this worldj :'16 Suddenly wefind ourselves close to the

Phaedo.

There is an appeal to detach

ourselves from the sensible and a way of looking, though here

only for an instant, at what might be a kind of immortality61

V I T A L

f\.J O U R I S H M E N T

distinct from physical existence. There is transcendence

but

because it does not give access to any substantial mode of being

or soul, the aspiration to surpass has no well-defined status. N odoubt this is part of the reason why w e find Zhuangzi attractivetoday. He points toward another horizon, but without raising itto a level on which the metaphysical mind might build anotherworld. He opens up a dimension beyond the tangible and the concrete , and he does so without turning it into obj ective greatnessor an obj ect of faith.In the

Zh uan8zi, there is, in fact, much discussion of amputees,

hunchbacks, cripples , and individuals with hooked noses, goiters,

and other marked physical characteristics . But they are raised tothe rank of conceptual personages, so there can b e no doubt thatthe discourse attempts to direct the mind to a place "beyond"perceptible form. One man is said to be so ugly that he "frightensthe whole world" and is in no position to come to the aid of others who are threatened with death or too poor to fill their stomachs. !7 And yet the men in his entourage show him great loyalty,and the women in his; company would rather b e his concubinethan another man's legitimate wife . It is reported that the princehimself, within a month of calling this man to him, becomes preoccupied with his thought. Within a year, he trusts him implicitly.Ultimately, he wants to make this m an his prime minister, hisonly fear being that the man may not accept his o ffer. What isthis man? The prince asks Confucius. As usual, Confucius (in the

Zhuan8zi)

answers obliquely, with an anecdote: on a mission to

the realm of the Chu, he sees some piglets feeding from their deadmother's body. A moment later, as if gripped by fear, they abandon her and flee. "This is because she no longer saw them, " "because she no longer resembled them:' What they loved in theirmother "was not her physical b eing" but "what employed herphysical being." This other thing, that which puts the physical62

VIJ I T H O U T

., S O U L , .

b e ing to good use, Aristotle would no doubt have named "the

soul." But C onfucius leaves it without a name, although later hecalls it "capacity"

(de).c

In the absence of a substantial notion of

the soul, this is the notion that ultimately prevails. But with thereturn to this fundamental category of Chinese thought comes aperspective that turns out to be not subj ectivity but invisible communicative e ffectivity, as it flows incessantly from the

dao,

or

"way, " that animates the world. This is expressed in exemplary

fashion by the strange influence this deformed person exercises, acurrency that, though indirect and discreet, is consequently allthe more potent and dm;able. And this is also what we encountered earlier in the guise of "heavenly" capacity - the full powerof the natural process that resides within us and that we mustlearn to connect with in order to "feed our lives:' But "capacity"is not merely that which takes the place of and dispenses with thenotion of soul. In traversing the organic and sensible , it also dissolves into its dynamism anything that might solidify into a "body:'

CHAPTER S I X

Do We Have a " B o dy" ?

I can doubt that I have a soul, but can I doubt that I have a body?Or, if I decide to doubt that I have ' a body by making a metaphysical decision , as D escartes heroically tried to do, can I doubt thatwhich "body" designates as a fundamental, primary notion, basedon a perception that is, in principle , the most immediate and general of all, at once internal and exernal, and about which everyone therefore agrees without a moment's hesitation ? And whichit is therefore p ointless to try to define because it precedes thesense of any understanding? "Body," when I say "my body," imposes its unequivocal and massive meaning all at once. Responding to the uniqueness of the soul, "body" in the West is an insularbut fully adequate term that has no rival or synonym when itcomes to designating the entire tangible part of the self, which itdoes all the more trenchantly because it compensates for what thesoul, by its very definition, preserves of the intangible. It is difficult to doubt the notion of the body because it encompasseseverything obj ective about my being. What happens, though, ifthe soul is n o longer conceived o f as an entity? Does this shiftaffect the monolithic nature of its partner, the body? If no essenceof the soul or psychic function is posited, doesn't the essence ofthe body similarly lose its coherence? The consequence of this is

l,-J O U R I S H M E i\..l T

\; J T A L

easy to foresee: to call into question the

or, at any rate , predefinitional consciousness of what it is to havea body will no doubt disturb Western thought most intimately,more than any other point made so far, on account of the functionthat the mind-body dichotomy (or, to revert to the more technical Greek terminology, the psychic-somatic distinction) has in ourthought (or the condition it imposes on it) .We are "well aware" of this - very well aware indeed, for ithas been repeated so often - but we will not be able to measureits importance until we find a way to shake our overwhelmingprejudice on this point. The conjunction of the two terms in theword

psychosomatic, born

out of theoretical remorse, merely con

firms the dichotomy while appearing to transcend it. Even the

concept of " drive"

( Trieb)

in Freud is a "boundary concept," as

well as an "elementary" one

(GrundbegrifJ and GrenzbegrifJ) , and

is understood in terms of the distinction between the psychic and

the somatic: the drive represents, at the psychic level, the activityof the body, understoo d as a source of internal excitations

psychischer Reprasen talJit) . 1

(aIs

The word "repre sent , " which is also

used in speaking of political representation, in itself suggests the

separation of the two levels and delegation from one to the other.By contrast, " feeding life " preserves the notional unity of lifeand thus begins to disrupt the dichotomization of the living thathad seemed such a permanent fixture of our thought. Because thephrase "feeding life" does not accord with the body- soul distinction , it not only avoids the appeal to the soul but also discreetlyundermines our ability to say, analytically, " obj ectively," and as ifthe term were devoid of all theoretical preconceptions, "I have abody" or " This is my body:'The theoretical stakes are considerable. To pursue them wemust, as always, pay rather close attention to language: like Nietzsche , I believe that philology is one of the most fruitful sources66

D O

W E

of innovation in

"

H A. V E

B O D Y

" )

This calls for patience if we

to

get close enough. Let us b egin, therefore, with the simple fact

several in terrelated terms for

simply call "body" (soma, corpus).

that in ancient Chinese there are

denoting what we in the West

Let us also explore the subtle differences between them. These

Chinese words intersect in meaning but do not precisely coincide. Each implies a particular perspective , and these perspectivescoexist side by side. None is subordinate to any of the others , and

xing refers primarily to the actualized

form; shen to the personal entity, the individual self; and ti to the

no term subsumes them all:

constitutive being. a None of the s e terms coincides completely

with the Western notion, because each echoes certain other words,and certain pairings of the three terms help to clarify their meanings. Thus "actualized form" is understood in relation (a relationship of both opposition and complementarity) to the transcendent- animating dimension

(shen)

that precedes all actualization .

The "personal entity" goes with the function of moral conscious

ness and knowledge of the heart- spirit"constitutive being" has breath- energy

(xin) that governs it; the

(qi) b as its partner, being

the materialization of the latter by way of condensation- concre

tion. On the one hand, these paired terms form, as before, poles(of intensive content) rather than specifying descriptive determinations. On the other hand, when I speak of subtleties of meaning, it is because the semantic alternatives are sometimes barelydistinguishable; the boundaries blur, or the components of thecouple become interchangeable , suggesting shifting notional landscapes in which n either member o f the p air monopolizes themeaning and no axis structures it. What is meant by "bod y" re mains a diffuse notion in classical Chinese, and its configurationvaries. Proof of this can be seen in the fact that in order to translate the m odern European term it was necessary to fix a moren eutral and rigid meaning by m aking a compound word that

V I T /\ L

detaches

i s

!V1 E i-J T

hvo terms from their semantic

usually rendered as

shen -ti

is

(the constitutive b eing as a personal

entity, the individual self ) . 2

I n Zhuangzi, however, i t is the other of these neighboring terms,

xing,

or the

actualized form,

that usually carries the sense of

"body" (when I say "my body"; for example ,

wu xing,

"me , (my)

actualized form" ) . But the term 's meaning covers a broad spectrum , and because it has no strict limits , the notion of bodythereby

seems to be graduated.

On the one hand , it is verb - like ,

connoting action (in the sense of giving form to and actualizing;

compare

xing xing:

"to give form to form, " to "bring it out" ) . On

the other hand, used as a noun, it retains the idea of concrete, particular actualization. In this respect, it contrasts with the stage inwhich something is invisible because it is not actualized. Here , itcharacterizes the progressivetory of things (the

dao)

(de), absolute capacity of the reposi

in its alternation with death, individual

life is described as a coming-and-going "from the non actualized

to the actualized form" las well as "from the actualized form to thenonactualized form." 3 In a derivative m o d e , the term can alsomean the aspect exhibited by the person ,4 or even the externalactualizations and manifestations of the personal self (the

shen).5

In many instance s , this leads Zhuangzi to clarity t h e notion b y

adding another term that pins down and focuses t h e meaning:"skeletal form" or "stature form" (armature) or "constitutive formwith its four limbs" (or its "nine holes" ) .cC onceived globally, what I would call my "body" thus becomes

particular actualization ,which, as such , constitutes me

here , in the language of Zhuangzi, the

subject to continuous modification,

fully and forms

my only possible identity. Both before and after

this stage of actualization, all identity falls apart: the "fundamen

tal , " that which belongs to the foundation of things (the68

dao),

is

o 0

the

\IV E

H / V E

,- B O D Y

-, ?

of the diffuse-confused and therefore also of the

"blur" or "vagueness" of dissolution and the "return" to the un

differentiated. That is why Chinese thought has no ontology: ithas no world of concrete essences. It possesses neither an individuating soul nor an opposing concept of matter (no

ule, which

Aristotle treats as the matter of the body) . It does have, though,

"materialization" by way of continuous concretion (under the yinfactor) , as well as "animation," which dispels its opacity and unfolds it (under the factor yang) . Like the external world, I amshaped and kept alive by this tension between self- compensatingopposites . The

actualiwtion that constitutes me (xing)

is thus con

ceived entirely in terms of the process of concentration- emana

tion that brings it about. Not only does it give me density andalertness, but it also makes me opaque and brings me clarity. Indoing so it forms and transforms me. Here, my "nature" is indeedthe entire vital being heaven bestows on me before anything isadded to it by my subj ective affective reaction

(qing) . d

Thus no

dualism is possible here: forming a pair with the more subtle andquintessentialized stage of energetic breath

(jing) ,

the individu

ated formation that constitutes me in a more physical sense "takes

root" and "is vitalized there:'6This, according to Zhuangzi's corpus, is how he would justify- on thoroughly naturalist grounds - not having to mourn thedeath of his wife: "From the mixture within the haze, by modifi

(qi); from the breath-energy, by

modification, there came the actualized form (xing), and from thiscation, there came breath-energy

actualized form, by modification, there came life ; now, owing to a

further modification, there is culmination in death:'7 (I have beenobliged here, in any event, to introduce some substantives as wellas a temporal relationship through conjugation that is not in theChinese, which uses more process-oriented terms.) We have herethe

actualizedJorm,

or, better,

the actualizingJorm (Xing,

the only

V i T A L

word that could

I S H

N O

to

E f'-J T

in

the cosmic breath. It is the individuating concretion of this ener

getic breath and, as such, prior to the particular advent of life . The"body" does not form itself only with life . Furthermore, in orderfor the notion of "body" to take on substance here, it would havebeen necessary to envision a counterpart for it. But here the"actualized form" is that which arises out of the flows of energythat permeate particular concretions, without any break in thesequence or intrusion from without. In this transition from nonexistence to the existence of an individual person , the Westernnotion of the body does not figure - cannot figure - because theperspective remains that of a homogeneous and continuous process. This conception therefore cannot b e fitted int o any of ourphilosophical pigeonholes: the "body" is not deemed an illusoryreality, and the assertion of the physical reality (of the "body " )does not reduce spirit t o a mere epiphenomenon secreted b y theorganic. Only phenomena of (energetic) individuation and deindividuation truly exist, and this physically oriented pro c e s s ,which is indeed the ad"ent and development of the "vital principle"e in its entirety,

naturally "retains" the (transcendent, animat

ing/ "spirit dimension" within itself as it flows from the original

energy.8This form

f actualization , which constitutes m e , is therefore

my whole vital being and not, reductively (materially) , my "body."This becomes especially evident if I translate , as literally as possible , the way I "practice" or "put to work" my actualized form

( wei xing) .g9

This can have no other meaning than maintaining

or feeding my life : for, as it happens, "to toil to enrich myself" to

the point of amassing inexhaustible riches "remains outside" this(good) "putting to work" of the "actualized form" that I am. Similarly, to "worry night and day" about achieving honors is to"remain at a distance from it." Likewise, "concern" about extend70

0 0

Vv E

H f.\ V E

" B O D Y " ,?

ing my life for fear of death "remains far away:' It should be clearwhy using the notion of "body" would be restricting. It misses theprocessive dimension, that of a global development that incorporates and is conditioned by the moral attitude, as is proper to vitalnourishment. Not only does my "actualized form"

(xing)

"fail to

dao, " as it is said, 1O but also it

(xing) , which constitutes me,

be born" (or "to live " ) "without the

is "by causing this actualized form

to exist (fully) " that "I can unfold my life most completely." Insymptomatic fashion , translators often render the same word

(xing) , with words that have similar meanings - first as "my body"and second as "mv health." 11;

B ecause I have attempted to maintain the broad range of the term

and its theoretical implication s , and b e cause I have refused toadapt it deliberately or allow it to b e reconfigured so that it accords with the lexicon of the target language (by translating it hereas "body" and elsewhere as "health" ) , I may have drifted off courseand ventured into the untranslatable. Or, rather, since I have continued to translate, my words may have become bogged down indangerous periphrasis and become opaque . Greater fluency wouldensue if I redirected the revived "body" and "soul" back into thehabit (or rut) of expected meaning. This disruption of the maj orepistemic expectations implied by the word "body" in the West(and now, globally, in China as well) makes it increasingly difficultto trace a p ath from European language to that which reads s otransparently i n ancient Chinese. This entanglement stems fromthe encounter with my language , both its vocabulary and its syntax. But if I rework it, melt it down and reshape it, it will little bylittle lend itself to another form of intelligibility (since I remain atall times within the realm of the intelligible) . That is, as long as I

and a body, each establishing its own

and instead regard myself as a p rocessive actualization or

cease to see myself as a soul

register,

71

V I ; /\ L

N O U

M c i'-: T

and "functional , " \vhich is animated and de

ployed to a degree proportionate to the decantation and de-opacification that take s place within me. Thus we have the pe c uliarform of what we would call a "life choice" as it would appear inChina: my being may allow itself to become totally materialized bythings h and thus become a reified thing, or else it may free itselffrom the s e obstructions and focalizations o f the vital and thusreestablish communication both within itself and with the world,reinciting and breathing new life into itself.That is why the Chinese have envisaged not salvation througheternal life but rather long life. That is also why we find that thethought of the vital (in Zhuangzi) and the thought of the moral (inMengzi) fully corroborate each other. Mengzi the moralist, in fact,favors feeding neither the body nor the soul but rather that whichis "greater" or " smaller" in myself, that which has more or lessvalue , as long as it is understood that both jall

organic being,uniquely extant (my ti) :i

category of mysuch,

equally under the

which is fully constitutive and, as

Mencius [Mengzi] said, "There is no part of himself which a man

does not love, and as he loves all, so he must nourish all. There is notan inch of skin which he does not love, and so there is not an inch ofskin which he will not nourish. For examining whether

nourishing

his

way

of

be good or not, what other rule is there but this, that he

determine by reflecting

on himself where it should be applied?

Some parts of the body are noble, and some ignoble; some great,

and some small. The great must not be injured for the small, nor thenoble for the ignoble. He who nourishes the little belonging to himis a little man, and he who nourishes the great is a great man .Here is a plantation-keeper, who neglects his wu and chia, andcultivates his sour jujube-trees - he is a poor plantation-keeper.He who nourishes one of his fingers, neglecting his shoulders or72

his hack, without

W E

,l!.. \f

i<n " ur1 n O

.. 8 0 D

that h e i s

V " '":'

so, is a man who resembles a

hurried wolf.A man who

only eats

and drinks is counted mean by others

because he nourishes what is little to the neglect of what is great.

If a man,fon d of his eating and drinking, were not to neglect

what

is r:fmore importance, how should his mouth and belly be considered

as no more than an inch of skin?"12

I have reproduced this text in full because it illustrates the follow

ing points. First, "to nourish" is used

univocally

(vitally) and is

indivisible between the planes that we distinguish as body and

soul, or moral and physical. Second, the most and least valuable(the "great" and the "little, " that which comes under the head ofmoral development

or desire)

derive equally from our (unique)

constitutive b eing and are generically

if the same order, like the

woo and the date tree, or the finger and the back. Third, feeding

equally legitimate . The next

rable to the functions of the senses (they exhibit the same notionof 8uan) But the latter are obsessed by external things and, intheir commerce with things, they allow themselves to be carriedaway. On the other hand, the function of the heart- spirit, which is"to perceive morally"

(si),

is wholly subordinate to my initiative.

Its outcome depends solely on me - that is why the "great man" is

as he is when this activity is not "captured" by others of "smaller"stature , that i s , of lesser value . Thus the only moral differenceb etween men is that some, the "great men," "follow their greatconstitutive b eing," or that which constitutes them as great, whileothers "follow their lesser constitutive being," or that which constitutes them as "little :' The crucial difference between the spiritand the senses, between the activity of the moral conscience andmaterial desire , is nevertheless purely axiological, because both73

V I T A L

N O U R I S H M E N T

share a common "functionality" that makes the m comparable

(able to be measured one against the other) .The integration of the senses and moral consciousness is suchthat, far from detaching us from what is supposedly a mere "body,"the activity o f the conscience actually reinforces this essentialunity. Mengzi offers this striking formulation: "Mencius [Mengzi]said: Our [physical] form is our nature emanating fro m Heaven ;only after becoming a Sage can one fully maintain one's [physical ,

xina] form:' 1 3

The verb that here is translated as "maintain"

(jian)

has several m e anings : "to tread upon" (as we say, "to tread apath," and again we have the Chinese m otif of the "way," that is,. b'l'o f VIaI Ity ) ; "t o acce d e t o " (a s we say, "t o acce d e t o th e throne " ) ;and "to keep a commitment" (the sage maintains his physical constitution as one keeps a promise .) 14 Or, as is said elsewhere , thevirtues rooted in the moral consciousn ess " grow and manifestthemselve s , " or "manifest themselves vitally," "by impressingtheir harmony on the look of the face"; they "are deployed overthe full expanse of the back and spread throughout the four limbs,so that these appendagefi seize without being told to do so:'15 Tothe sage , the whole of his physical being becomes transparent;nothing remains to resist his injunction or create opacity. Mengziis not content here to declare his open opposition to an asceticismbased in principle ; his words stand as an implicit obstacle to anypossible dualism (indeed, that is why the statement is so concise).Only the sage, we are told, can fullyhe has completely

dep loyed his

employ his physique, because

(jin xin ) ; k

moral consciousn e s s

only he can truly "practice" his actualized form and keep himself"in shape," raising his entire being to a pinnacle of intensity.

CHAPTER S E V E N

Feeding Your Breath-Energy

What blindness might philosophy suffer from, then, or what illu

sion might it nurse? For in the representation that it has traditionally favored of itself, philosophy not only anoints itself the queenof discipline s - at once the foundation of every discipline andthe keystone of all knowledge (a stereotype now suspect even tophilosophy itself) - but it also conceives of itself as a privilegedactivity that reflects on itself in an absolute manner. That is, itsees itself as an activity that questions itself radically and is capable of reopening every possibility because it seeks to work its wayback to the origin of thought. Its classic ambition is

nothing. Indeed: unable

to assume

to escape its own history, philosophy has

no way of investigating its own anthropological roots or the de

gree to which it merely makes explicit, tidies up, and chews overcertain basic conceptions (the word "conception" should be understood here in its generative as well as notional sense - conceptions both prefigure and fertilize) that philosophy in no wayinherits from itself. It

cannot even imagine the

degree to which it

is dependent on those conception s . I have already insisted that

"soul" and "body" are typically, and even archetypically, of thisorder. They are the product of more deeply rooted cultural choices- primordial cultural choices whose strangeness can be revealed75

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with other, different choices,

did

Chinese thought not sanction a similar dichotomy in its represen

tation of the human ? Because it was based on a unitary concep tion of the advent and constitution of the world and of man, a

more global conception, namely, that of breath -energy , or qi.a To

judge by its ancient written forms, this Sinogram includes the element vapor above the sign for rice , indicating its nutritive func

tion , or it appears above the sign for fire , thus representing itscapacity for emanation and diffuse circulation. The formation ofboth men and things is to be taken as a condensation or coagulation of this continuous primal current, represented by an imagethat adeguately expresses both the efficacy and the temporarinessof the phenomenon: just as water condenses and "freezes into

diffuse and invisible flow of energy that wends its way

ceaselessly through the world, animating it as it goes.

Atavism of thought (of prethought): prior to the encounter withEurope, no Chinese thip ker escaped from this notional frameworkor would even have b e en capable of suspecting its prenotionalimplications . In this respect, Zh uang zi invented nothing andmerely trusted in the evidence of the ample cosmic respiration:"Human life is a concentration of breath - energy (qi): life is the

result of this concentration, death the result of its dissolution . . . .

Thus it is said that what courses through the entire world andcauses it to communicate is this unitary breath, Ji qf'2 This lap

idary formula is crucial because of what it is incapable of imagin

ing, which make s it undermine all the more radically and aboveall, the opposition of idealism and materialism (for us) . Such astatement could easily be described as materialist, in light of itsthoroughgoing naturalism (nothing beyond, outside, or radicallydifferent from the order of phenomena is introduced) . But to do

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so would be to forget that what congeals here into a cause is not

the "causalist," globally deterministic cause of bodies (corpuscles)reduced to atoms but rather a

processive cause

of breath (energy)

that is self- regulated by its "spiritual dimension:' Through this

breath-energy, I am connected to the primordial current, the generous progenitor from which my life stems directly and permanently (as my life stems from God in the idealist vision). That iswhy "wisdom" (or "morality" or " spirituality" or "value s " : thedifferences among these terms vanish at this most fully de-ideologized point of the program) consists " s olely" ( and I shall havemore to say about this ,"solely, " liberated from the limits of anymetaphysical construction) in returning to the primordial flow. Imove back through the actualizati'o n that I am, shedding the opacification b orn o f condensing individualizatio n , and beneficiallyreactivate life through a continual process o f actualization anddeactualization. This reincites my life . More succinctly put, widom is a matter of freeing myself from all internal obstructionsand focalizations in order to recover the communicative aptitudeof the

qi

that produces me. This aptitude can neither mature nor

stagnate but must be kept alert. Zhuangzi puts it more eloquently:

"That is why the sage values the one [of the breath energy] :'Would it be worth the trouble , however, to pursue this anthropological distinction in human conceptions if the effort did notaffect the intelligibility of all (common) experience? Certainly,for even if they only shakily ground themselves

a priori - trapped

from the outset in the notional prejudices that I am trying to de

lineate - they j ustify themselves

a p osteriori by establishing frame

works that make various realms of intelligibility possible. These

isolated realms of intelligibility can be shape d and woven t o gether o n a single loom so a s to reveal what seems to me a newtranscultural and translinguistic vocation for philosophy. For77

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when

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evokes the sham an's fantastic powers to

move through water without impediment and to walk on fire

without b eing burned, the explanation of those powers exclusively in terms of the ability to manage the breath- energy transforms the ancient mythico-religious sources into elements of"logic" ( i nterpreted as

10goS) . 3

Indeed, I b elieve that this logic

seizes upon vestiges of a more ancient way of thinking in order to

elucidate. What is it that the sage is able to "preserve, " and that inturn saves and preserves him by extending his youth indefinitely?Is it not precisely the absolute source o f the vital, nam ely, the"breath- energy"? This is the obj ect (the least " obj ective" obj ectimaginable) of the refin ement and ascesis that proceed by way ofprogres sive and ultimately forthright abandonment. O r, at anyrate , it is toward such a decantation-intensification that a gesture isbeing made.Earlier, the carpenter who built the marvelous bell stand worthy of a god remarked on this: my disengagement from the worldand my " forgetfulness" (of rewards and praise and even of theprince's court and of my own physical constitution) can be tracedback to the impulse to not "waste my breath-energy:'4 This experience is widely shared. Picasso, I think, offers the best commentary on the carpenter's confession: "Every creature possesses thesame quantity of energy. The average person wastes his in a thousand ways. I channel my strength in one direction: into painting,to which I sacrifice all the rest - you and everybody else, myselfincluded."5 Anyone who intends to create an o euvre should, Ithink, heed this motto: one's work requires one not to "waste"one's breath - energy. To that end, one must voluntarily (ascetically) withdraw from all the ordinary investments among whichone's vitality would normally be dispersed; one must sacrificethose investments - immorally (or "egotistically" ) , as others mayj udge - in order to concentrate on the one goal. For it is truly at

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this fundamental level of the vital and its economy, and not, as isordinarily believed, at the level of talent, genius, or inspiration( or, in another version, of patience and e ffort, all of which ismerely consequential) , that the work truly becomes possible andb egins to develop in an unforced way. O nly at this point has ittapped into its own generous source of nourishment, on whichcreativity depends . As alien as the two perspectives are in termsof their anthropological roots , they clearly share a common andeasily identified fund of experience . Yet it seems to me that Chinese reflection allows us to shed more light on what makes all thiscoherent. The notion of qi reveals the way detachment (from boththe "world" and the "self" ) and energetic concentration lead tothe refinement-emancipation th at makes my vital capacity alertand communicative , freeing it from organic encumbrances (stupidity and mental torpor) and leading to invention.Let us not dwell, therefore, on what might at first sight seemfantastic in these shamanic tales.6 In the account of the shaman'sfabulous powers, we are told that the breath- energy must remain"pure" - in a decanted, refined state - so as to allow the artisan tofree himself from all internal impediments and fixations and perpetuate the growth and fluidity of his being, to the point where heno longer runs up against the materializations and opacities of thesensible . Then he can surmount them easily (moving, accordingto the ancient motifs , through water without impediment, walking on fire without being burned, and so on) . None of the sethings can b e achieved, we are warne d , through "kn owledge , "" skill," " steadfastness," o r "audacity" - prowess, i n short, i s powerless. In the final stage, the breath- energy is no longer primordial , pervasive , and communicative ; it i s stiff and heavy. In thiscruder stage , when the breath- energy has become dense to thepoint of losing all ductility, all beings, Zhuangzi explains, are confined "to the same level of phenomenality:' They clash fatally with79

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one another and men are inevitably pummeled by the elements .

But the man who knows how to delve within himself by purifyingand decanting his breath- energy - the one who knows how toachieve a more alert and nimble stage of existence rather thanallow himself to become bogged down in the opacifying coagulation of his phYSical being - can recover his freely and " purely"

evolutive capacity and thus reconnect with the ceaseless processiv

ity of heaven ("keeping heaven entire in oneself, " as Zhuangziputs it) . One who is able to do this will find himself "withdrawn"into the unlimited reactive sequence (of heaven) "whose threadhas neither beginning nor end:' As if sheltered from all harm, hewill no longer be subj ect to the insipid, obtuse, local aggression ofthings, which will have lost all purchase on his constant develop ment. Thus it is not my "soul" or even my "body" that I "nourish"but my "breath-energy:' In the end, my internal dynamism is themost important thing to nourish.Hence what gives bre th - energy its vitalizing and nourishingpower is its circulating, penetrating, and therefore

incitinB

irriBatinB

character. On earth, we find this energetic breath in the

form of winds that waft about the slightest features of the landscape and through the smallest fissures , instigating harmoniouswaves and vibrations (this motif is one of the oldest in China;for example, there is the notion of "wind- scene" or "wind-landscap e , " JenB-jinB) . b We also find it beneath the earth, coursingendlessly through its vein s , causing m ountains to rise vertiginously, tracing the undulations of the earth, promoting prosperity, and attracting geomancers in search of sites for p alaces andtombs. I also find it forever circulating within my own physicalbeing, maintaining its rhythmic pulsation in all the channelsthrough which energy flows (and which the acupuncturist endeavors to fre e of all obstruction) . This communicativeness of the80

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energetic breath links my internal

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to one another and also

connects me to the principle of the world's evolution and trans

formation: a vision at once global, unified, and astonishingly simple- indeed, impossible to grasp , owing to its simplicity. For dualismmay fret and dramatize, but it also

builds. This unitary function of

the energetic breath, at once communicating and vitalizing, can

only be

varied - poetically.

Any circulation running counter to the natural rhythms will

give rise to disorders both internal and external. Thus the onlyimpediments to this circulation are the calamities of the naturalworld and the diseases of the individual. For the Chinese moralists , evil is nothing other than th blockage of our moral reactivity, which dulls and paralyzes our sentiment of humanity (to thepoint where I no longer react to the intolerable when it threatensothers and I lose all "pity"). By the same token, for Chinese physicians, disease is nothing other than the blockage of my vital reactivity, which first traps and then saps my energy. But is it right toseparate the moral from the medical dimension? Is not the distinction factitious, even if its effect is clarifying? In the

Zhuangzi,

when Duke Huan suddenly falls ill because he thinks he has seenan evil spirit, his counselor easily proves to him that he suffersfrom self- inflicted harm rather than a curse. His malady, thoughquite real, comes solely from the fact that his fear has created aninternal obstruction. For if the accumulated breath- energy "disperses and does not return," "it will no longer be sufficiene' "If itgoes up and does not come back down," "the man will be drivento rage." "If it goes down and does not come back up, " "the manwill be inclined to forgetfulness." Finally, "if it neither goes upnor down" and collects in the man ' s heart, " sickness ensues :'7From this typology, which leads to a diagnosis and clearly minglesthe moral and the physical indiscriminately, it follows that thebreath-energy should not be allowed either to disperse or to be81

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blocked , either t o accumulate or t o be oriented i n a single direc

tion. Instead, it should be enco uraged always to now in all direction s , for b o th our (physical ? ) health and the " full (mental?)form" of our faculties depend on it.

Respiration

shows that the function of the breath - energy is to

maintain the vital circulation within ( although the respiratory

breath, which is said to be "posterior," is to be distinguished fromthe primordial nux). Respiration is the most practical applicationof the vital nux and suffices to set me on the path to wisdom. Is itnot, indeed, already all of wisdom? No Chinese thinker evokesrespiratory alternation to denounce its inanity, as the Stoic philosopher d o e s the moment his attention turns away from thebreath that transmits life (in the manner of the divine

pneuma):

" See the breath also , what kind o f a thing it is, air, and n o t alwaysthe same

(ou aei to auto), " Marcus Aurelius says disdainfully,

"but

every moment sent out and again sucked in:'8 Such contradictorymotion is enough to reveal the nullity of the thing . But ratherthan see the alternation of breathing as a sign of inconsistencyto b e compared unfavorably with the identity of b eing, Chinesethinkers commonly saw respiration a s an act of renewal thatmakes us participants in a vast movement of communication byway o f concentration - dispersion, a movement that continuallyactivates life . What characterizes the sage, according to Zhuangzi,is the fact that his breathing is "deep - de e p ."9 N ot only does itembody harmonious regulation in its alternation, but, moreover,the intensive implied by the repetition of the word tells us thatrespiration must extend throughout the physical being to the veryextremitie s : " The authentic man breathes from his heels , " inother words, to his foundations; the common man breathes only"from his throat:' l0Various techniques employed by the adepts of long life , suchas methodical inhalation-exhalation aimed at a specific organ and82

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deep versus shallow breathing, were already known to

Zhuanszi, 11

as were the accompanying gymnastic exercises, which employed

the art of "extending and contracting" ("hanging like a bear andstretching like a bird") to free up all the difficult passages wherecommunication might be inhibited throughout the physical being.In the D aoist tradition of vital nourishment, countless formulasand prescriptions were carefully collected in manuals, which recommended using the force of the air accumulated and held withinto break down these obstructions, as well as using the "innereye"C to follow and monitor the circulation of the breath so as toensure that it brought 'its regenerative p ower to the location ofthe malady. 1 2The respiratory breath thus fulfills two nutritive functions atonc e : on the one hand, vital communication (specifically, thebreath is supposed to push the blood through the veins with eachexhalation-inhalation) and, on the other hand, metabolism ("spitting out the exhausted air to breathe in the fresh" casts respirationas the principal agent of vital replenishment) . At times, the Zhuanszibegins to hint that this respiratory nutrition , which is nutrition

par excellence b ecause it is more refined and d ecanted of its mate

riality than any other form (though still within the realm of thephenomenal), might replace the cruder and more opaque nourishment of ordinary foods. Respiratory nourishment is not spiritualfrom the start (as a nourishment of the soul would b e ) , butbecause it operates in a purer mode, it leads to spiritualization.Ultimately, Zhuangzi discusses the sages of remote Mount Gushi,who , as legend has it, are wholly " spiritual" beings content to"breathe the wind and drink the dew" and who, because th ey donot need to eat grains of any kind, are able to preserve their virginal "delicacy" and "freshness," spreading their beneficial influence without impediment or limit. Might they not - despite thesuspicions aroused by what one takes at first to be an exaggeration

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- b e more than a strange fable or even a mythological symbol?

(Or, turning the image on its head and interpreting it negativelyor pathologically, might we not recognize here the ideal cherishedby every anorexic?)I have said enough, I think, or at any rate commented enough onthe

Zhuangzi,

to show why energetic nourishment is the pivotal

element in personal development. It is rooted in the most physi

cal level of our nature and yet at the same time unfolds itself atthe moral and spiritual level. Indeed, the food we ordinarily eat isalready, like every other reality of the world, a concretion of theenergetic breath, albeit in a heavier and thicker form. Accordingto Chinese physiology, foo d ingested into the stomach is transformed so that flavors become breaths, so that the five breathsemanating from the five flavors permeate the five organs (thetypologies are conveniently aligned ! ) , and each of these absorbsthe breath from its element and feeds on it. Furthermore , thesevarious breaths mix with water and turn red under the influenceof the spleen to form blood. The "blood-breath" manifests itselfas ardor, whose variation with age is to be taken into consideration, Confucius warns, if we are properly to judge the ethical demands of each stage of life . 1 3 Moreover, according to Daoistspecialists in vital nourishment (for this knowledge also b ecamedoctrinal) , " quintessence"

(shen)

ving) , "breath" (qi), and the "spiritual"

are the "three treasures" or three stages in the tran s

formation and development o f the personality. Breath is the medi

an element in this transmutation . A basic saying of Daoism i s :" Quinte s s ence is the mother of breath, a n d t h e spiritual is theson:' The point that there is no discontinuity in passing from onestage to another could not b e stated more explicitly. The s e quence can b e read, moreover, i n both directions : at birth, the"spiritual" enters the fetus, giving rise to "breath, " which engen-

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ders " quintessence :' Then , as one grows o lder, one must refinethe " quintessence" of one's physical being so as to transform itinto "breath," which then b ecomes the " spiritual, " the most re fined and vitalizing stage of energy (in which the man gifted withshen -ren). d 14

long life maintains himself,

Yet vital nourishment by way of breath - energy is not peculiar

to adepts of long life . Mengzi also believed that breath-energy iswhat "fills" our constitutive being, which is n ormally controlledby the regulatory function of the heart- spirit. 15 This energeticbreath is fundamentally, in itself, physical in nature. This becomesevident, for example, when we stumble or begin to run. For then

the energetic breath suddenly taes precedence over the regula

tive function of the spirit and sets i t i n motion . At the same time,Mengzi prides himself on correct conduct that "nourishes" andripens an "infinitely expansive"c energetic breath that fills " everything between Heaven and Earth" and is intimately tied to morality. Whenever dissatisfaction arises at the level of the moralconsciousness, this energetic breath, which is the source of aspiration, feels the lack and subsides . Here, then, is proof, if any werestill needed, that the full development of the p ersonality, to whichthe uninhibited flow of breath within us contributes, is inextric ably moral a n d physical. By contrast, the " s oul" and even the"body" suddenly reveal themselves to be astonishingly abstractcategories.

8S

CHAPTER E I G HT

Procedures of Vital Nourishment

N ow is the time to read one of the l'Il0st celebrated dialogues of the

Zhuangzi .

At the heart of the chapter " O n the Principle of Vital

N ourishment," Zhuangzi brings together, as he often does, a prince

and an artisan . ! The artisan's teaching is not learned from othersnor doctrinal in character, but rather arises solely from his personalexperience and his skill with tools. His kind of know ledge is morefundamental than theoretical knowledge because it stems from theutility of things. He develops a mode of "understanding" or dis cernment,

Umsicht, which is his own highly personal way of seeing

the task and shaping his "handicraft" accordingly (Heidegger uses

the word

hantieren) . 2

Indee d , contemplating a hammer tells us

nothing about what a hammer really is; no "being" yields itself up

from the hammer until it is used. One has to hold it in one's handand wield it for a purpose, gradually gaining mastery of its use, inorder to know it. No description can substitute. Yet a hammer isstill a rather crude tool, is it not? Zhuangzi develops the theme bydiscussing a knife :Butcher Ding was cutting u p a n o x for Prince Wenhui. From the wayhe gripped the animal with his hand, propped it against his shoulder,planted his feet firmly on the ground, and pressed it against his knee,

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hua emanated from him so musically, and his knife moved so well in

rhythm, giving off hUG, that it matched a tune note for note, nowsounding like "The Dance of the Mulberry Grove" and now echoingthe melody of "The Feathered Heads" lor, in another reading: he camedown with his knife at the precise point where the veins cometogether] ."Truly wonderful ! " exclaimed the prince. "The heights that skillcan reach ! " The butcher put down his knife and replied, "I am takenwith the Dao, which goes beyond skill. When I began cutting upoxen, I could not help seeing the animal whole. After three yearsthe [massive] wholeness of the animal was no longer inescapable.And now my contact with it is [decanted and] spiritual, and I nolonger see it solely with my eyes. When the knowledge of thesenses ends, my spiritual faculty seeks to go further by attending tothe natural ["heavenly"] structure of the animal. So I attack the bigspaces and guide my blade through the broad passages by hewingalong the internal shape. I therefore never touch the veins, arteries,muscles, or nerves, plUch less the big bones."A good butcher changes his knife once a year, because he slicesnesh. A mediocre butcher changes his knife once a month, becausehe hacks at bone. I've been doing this work for nineteen years, I'vecut up thousands of oxen, yet the blade of my knife is still as goodas if it had just been sharpened:'"Nevertheless, each time I come to a place where different partscome together, I consider the difficulty, and - very carefully, withmy eyes fixed on what I'm doing, working slowly - I move theknife as delicately as possible: there is a

hUG, and it falls apart, as if it

were a clump of earth falling to the ground. I then withdraw my

knife and stand up straight. I look around, and when I find my innercontentment, I relax. Then I wipe my knife and put it back in itssheath:'"Truly wonderfu!! " the prince exclaimed. "Upon hearing the88

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words o f Butcher Ding, I understand what it means to feed one's

life:'3

This translation calls for several comments . When the butcher

dao and not the art or technique of

dao has, I think, two related meanings: it means

says that he is taken with the

his trade, the word

"the operation of things" in the most general sense,4 and it also

means a particular way of operating. Furthermore , it seems to methat this is why the

dao of heaven,

dao is such an interesting notion. One says the

dao, when one wants

or, more absolutely, just the

to speak of the great process of things and its fund of immanence .

One also says "my

dao, "

that is, my own personal way of doing

things and achieving success. The latter activity, as individual and

tenuous as it is, is connected to the world's activity; both stemfrom the same capacity. Hence I would choo s e to translate theword here as "procedure ," in order to maintain the operationaland processive dimension that corre sponds to the notion. It isbecause the

dao retains

the sense of the natural consequences of

a process that it can b e contrasted here with art or technique ,

which in Zhuangzi's usage is something that "binds" or imposes aconstraint and that, by dint of routine , subj ugates.s The butcherwho follows the natural

dao achieves

ease and relaxation.

What does it mean, however, that at first the butcher cannot

help seeing the whole ox, whereas later the animal no longer ap p ears to him in its massive wholenes s ? I understand this as follows: at the beginning of his apprenticeship, the butcher confrontsthe whole mass of the ox as a stark fact. The ox is something thatis simply there , filling his entire perceptual field and thus blocking a more internal, intense, and subtle perception of the animal.Then, gradually, as the years pass and his perceptual abilities growmore refined, he b egins to see into the opaque mass of the ani mal's body and divine even i t s internal articulations (does this not

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also happen to artists, as it happened to C ezanne at Mont Sainte

Victoire ?). Hence I would not translate this passage as one Frenchtranslator has done ("Three years later, I saw only parts" ) , b e cause no word for "parts" appears i n the sentence. Moreover, therelationship of part to whole is quite Greek. Indeed, it is constitutive of Ancient Greek thought, but not of Chin e s e (as is wellknown, the Chinese, unlike the Greeks and the Hindus, showedlittle interest in anatomy) . What the butcher sees later on, as heprogresses, is neither a "part" of the ox (which implies a narrowedperceptual field), nor is it the whole animal. Rather, his deepenedperce p tion reveals the ox relieved of its opacity (which had imposed its "wholeness" ) . The ox has been opened up for him (asthough X-rayed by spirit).What is meant here by " spirit" remains to be seen, however.In my translation, I speak of a " [decanted and] spiritual contact"with the animal, rather than of the butcher's " spirit" or "mind,"because the reference is clearly not to any organ or function (forin that case Zhuangzi ;would have writtenbut to a

subtle and unimpeded perception,

xin ,

or "heart- spirit" )

which, as we have seen,

arrive s from the transformation -purification of breath - energy:

transcending the stage of the crude and tangible, it gives access to"subtlety" and delves into the invisible. To be sure, the butcherdoes not give up on looking, as he makes clear at the end. On thecontrary, his gaze focuses on the difficulty. 6 With this , the ox'sbody, which initially had been at the stage of perceived obj ect or abanal presence , enters into a partnership with the butcher's internal perception, with which it evolves in concert (just as the woodof the tree collaborates with the carpenter to create a b ell stand) .That is why the appropriate verb here is not "to see" but "to contact:' In general, to evolve at a distance, in contact as well as inharmony with things, is the distinctive trait of this transcendentfaculty of perception!

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Last but not least, I cannot separate this operation of dismem

b erment even temporarily from what the prince says about it atthe end, as his is the only commentary on this passage: he nowunderstands what it means to "feed one's life." The type of activity described here can only be understood in connection with thisvital question. Is it appropriate, however, to read the whole episode as deliberately metaphorical, as Chinese commentators havetraditionally don e ? Just as the butcher initially cannot s e e theinterstitial structure of the ox, "so, too, [the person who is learning to fe e d his life ] cannot at first contemplate the authenticworld:' And just as the butcher makes sure that the muscles andbones separate at the j oints by thymselves , "so, too, [the adept ofthe

dao] stands at the point where life

and death come together"

and makes sure, by contemplating his spirit, "to separate them

cleanly, " and so on.7 For one much later commentator, WangFuzhi, the "big bones" are the big dangers and maj or encum brances of life . The space between the j oints are opportunities toescape from these dangers . The delicate handling of the knife atthe most complex j oints " serves as an image" for the omnipresentpossibility of tranquillity and attentiveness that avoids any clashwith the outside world. By contrast, the "thickness" of the (ordinary b utch er s ) k illfe can b e our " a ffect, " " ta I ent, " or "k now I '

edge ," which attempt to force the situation without waiting for amature solution to emerge on its own , wearing us down for nogood reason. This interpretation, which is completely intellectualized and operates solely at the level of representation, gives toorigid an idea, I think, of what can be learned only from within bywielding the implement in the process. H ence, I believe that thisaccount of the butcher's method of operation is not allegoricalbut rather allusive: it does not illustrate the way one gains access tovital nourishment but rather

introduces it.

In the proper sense of

the word, it initiates. It is not a narrative to b e deciphered point

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it shows how to usc one 's own potential. That is

why the prince's very terse commentary takes a form that is notso much explanatory as indicative . It is stimulating and inductiveat the same tim e : upon hearing the se words, "I obtain" (vitalnourishment).If the lesson of the episode is to be drawn not by minutelydecoding the scene but instead by grasping it as a whole, comprehending its flow and attending to its effects (such as the emulativeeffect of the gestures described at the beginning of the episode asa ballet) , th e reason is, of course, that it is not exclusively theo retical . True comprehension cannot come until I have graduallyincorporated into myself the ability to remain open to change(laid out the beginning as a necessity and so magnificently embodied here ) . As the endlessly flowing gestures of Chinese gymnastics (such as

taijiquan)

still teach today, this is the condition

that must be satisfied if we are to remain sharp and resist being

worn down, just like the butcher's knife , which, after years andyears of use (and there is no need to speculate on the meaningof the number "nineten," which is formed of the figure for yinadded to the figure for yang) , is as keen as if it had just come fromthe grind ston e . Thus we should "wield" our p otential as thebutcher wields his knife , constantly seeking the unimpeded path.For what makes such resistance to wear possible if not the abilityto

circulate

and to (cause to)

communicate through the

actualized

form (in this case the body of the ox) without m eeting any obstruction or running the risk of becoming bogged down, even intho s e difficult places where the arrangement of things is mostcomplex ? There is, as Zhuangzi continually teaches us, but oneway to acquire this ability: by

rifinin8 our faculties to make them

sharper and more alert.

The knife cleaves through the massive , the opaqu e , and theconcrete b ecause the thickness of these stages has b e en tran -

P R Q C

,cended

D U R E S

O F

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i\l O U

I S H rv'l E N T

its blade. Yet this "without thickness" still

to the realm of the phenomenal; it is the extreme attenuation of

the phenomenal that allows it to operate without becomingtrapped in any way. Moreover, the perception of the ox is

decanted

to the p oint where the subtlest of internal passages stands re

vealed. With this exquisite perception comes the ability to guidemy breath- energy everywhere, whether in the thickness of myphysical being or on the scale of my life (there is no need tochoose either level, and neither is modeled on the other) , so thatit is neither thwarted nor dispersed but

continues toflow. The les

son is as comprehensive as can be, at once vital and moral. Where

complexity is greatest, the handling of the knife (of potential) isso delicate that "with a simple

Huo "

the complexity "has already

fallen apart." There is no need to search or to force . A tranquil

solution emerges from the minute escape route implicit in the situation itself and cautiously exploited by my perspicacity. To reachthis level of mastery where an effect is produced without theslightest additional effort requires extreme concentration . Suchconcentration is the opposite of obsession. The procedure of following the wielding of the knife has shown how the process ofimmanence, by cleaving to the natural shape of the thing itself,continually finds its "way, " or

dao,

without effort or resistance.

That is why there can be no lesson here : immanence cannot be

explained, b ecause the thought of it is neither constructed northeorized. At the same time there is, paradoxically, instruction (ofan oblique sort) , which teaches that we must learn to welcomethat which comes of its own accord. This is n o doubt what is mostdifficult: to learn to let vitality come and go , constantly, withinmyself.Generally, I am rather skeptical of attempts to compare texts thatcome from cultures that have remained foreign to one another, by93

T A L

! S H '/l E N T

N O U

which I mean cultures between which there are no historical n:la

tionships o f influence, borrowing, or contamination . Withoutsome broad framework capable of establishing a set of questionsthat could make each culture aware of the other's preoccupations,such comparisons are unlikely to succeed in grasping what is trulyat stake , culturally and formatively, in what I have been callingthe prenotional. They run the risk of simply drawing quick - andarbitrary - parallels . Here, however, the comparison brings intoview a range of oppositions too illuminating to pass up . Ratherthan obscure cultural roots , the comparison reveals how radicalthe differences b etween the culture s are . The passage on theworkings of the dialectic in the

Phaedrus is

as crucial for under

standing Plato's work as this passage is for understanding Zhuang

zi's approach. In Plato , too, we find that the person who performsan operation must be capable of dividing things "into their naturalkinds" and must be careful "not to . . . hack off parts like a clumsybutcher:'8 Here, mirroring the "ascent" toward the idea throughthe conglomeration of ,a scattered multiplicity into a single form,is the contrary operation, a "descent" by division and subdivisionof species. We descend until we reach something that no longerexhibits any internal differentiation, namely, the indivisible oratomic species, which is the proper form of the thing in question.Plato illustrates this method by using it to define love , a greatWestern theme if ever there was one. Within the unitary genus of"madness common to men and gods," we can still hack off a left(reprehensible) and a right (praiseworthy) member and continuedissecting in this way "without letup" until we reach an adequatelevel of determinacy.Since this overall unity of the idea is comparable to the overallunity of a living creature , it is clear that such a dissection must beundertaken not at random but in accordance with the naturalarticulations of the thing, so as to respect the integrity and soli94

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darity of its parts - for there is indeed "part" ( meros) . By contrast,

in Zhuangzi, the internal knowledge of how to handle (the knife)

is foregrounded, along with the gestural melody: the tool is not

only a m e ans but also a vector of efficacy (whether it is thebutcher's knife or the painter 's brush - any number of ancient,Chinese p ainting manuals were inspired by this episode ) . Theessentia l thing is to cut not so much "through the j oints" as

between

elements that make up a struc

void wherein communication (and thus

them: the focus is not the

ture but the interstitial

respiration- animation) takes place. So the logic here is not a logic

of construction , as in ge(i)metry, where one composes and decomposes a figure, but one of continuation, which allows processes to

unfold endlessly. We have , on th e one hand, rigorous

and , on the other,

nonobstruction , and so on.

difi nition

Once again we mea

sure the gulf that separates the operation of knowledge for thesake of theory (the method of "analysis" ) from that which maintains and nourishes life . Instead of pairing b eing and thought,which lays the groundwork for philosophy, attention is paid hereto the function (or the passing - "whereby things pass,"

dao)

of

the viable .Since immanence is not self- explanatory, it can only b e introduced in stages , revealing the gradual integration of what is reflected in each case by ease and ability. This is the purpose of theseries of anecdotes contained in the chapter of the

Zhuangzi enti

tled "Access to [ Comprehension of] Life , " on which I have already

commented at length. These anecdotes break the butcher episodeinto sequences wherein the grasp of the

dao becomes increasingly

internalized - to the point of denying that there is such a thing as

dao.

Procedural thought culminates when procedure ceases to

recognize itself. The first anecdote illustrates the concentration

that brings us to the spiritual stage, where the desired effect is95

V I I

obtained

N O

R 1 S c-i M E N T

s u a and vvithout further risk, effort, or uncer-

tainty.9 On leaving a forest, C onfucius encounters a hunchback

who is catching cicadas with a pole as easily as if he were pickingthem up off the ground. He admires the man's skill, just like theprince who admired the butcher's technique, and becomes naturally curious about his

daD.

" For five or six months," the hunch

back answers, "I practiced balancing balls on the end of the poleand not letting them drop. When I was able to balance two balls,I still occasionally missed a cicada. When I could balance three , Imissed no more than one in ten. By the time I could balance five,I was catching cicadas as easily as if I were picking them up byhand:' At this stage , he was able to hold his body as still as a treetrunk, while his unused arm was like a dry limb . " H e wouldn'tgive the wings of a cicada for all the things of the world." "Howcould he fail to catch them?" Thus concentration sharpens thefacultie s , allowing efficacy to manifest itself fully and withouthesitation. That this efficacy is again characterized as "spiritual"

(shen)

does not mean that the spirit as organ is being distinguished

from the "body:' Everything in this episode, as in the previous

one, is a matter of gesture and has to do with manual dexterity;the pole in this case takes the place of the knife . The point is,rather, that the level attained through this dexterity is "heaven,"or, in other words , a natural processivity that reduces all inherentresistance and opacity to the cruder stage of the concrete. Thanksto its own impeccable perfection, it frees itself from its approximations. Once again , "spiritual" is not an analytic term but anintensive one (a suitable interpretation would be that concentration "culminates" in the spiritual) .The second episode involves crossing a gulf, and again we aretold that the b oatman handles the boat " like a spirit , " that is,without encountering resistance, with ease, and as he pleases. loH e , too, recounts the degrees of his apprenticeship: a good swim-

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mer can learn the knack of handling a boat through regular practic e , but a diver will already know how to d o it, even if he hasn ever s e en a b o at before. The lesson discreetly delivered hereneeds to be elucidated: seamanship is not learned by handling aboat. The knowledge required by the tool is not ultimately technique; it does not belong to the same level as its obj ect (that iswhy it is no longer an "obj ect" ) . Instead, the effect is to be soughtbeforehand, by preparing the situation or acquiring the right attitude before the fact, so that the desired outcome will flow naturally. Through training, a good swimmer comes to "forget" theelement of water. The .diver, on the contrary, sees the gulf as ahill, and the turning of his boat disturbs him no more than a cartsliding downhill backward. Beca se he has a more intimate relationship to the element, and because he p erceives its internallogic or configuration better the more he immerses himself in it,the boatman wields his instrument with perfect ease. The boat islike the knife: the user who conforms to its requirements alwaysknows where to turn.Here, the gulf was like an abyss; there , water falls from a dizzying height - another metaphor for an (apparent) impasse, like thecomplex j oints that impede the passage of the butcher's knife ." The waterfall m easured thirty cubits high, and the rapids extended over forty stadia. Neither the giant tortoises nor the crocodiles nor the fish nor the mud turtles could swim there : ' l lSuddenly, Confucius spots a man i n the water. Thinking that theswimmer must be despondent and suicidal, he dispatches a disciple to try to pull him out. But a hundred paces downstream, theman climbs out of the water, his hair all disheveled, and calmlystrolls along the bank, singing as he goes. Unsurprisingly, Confucius asks him the usual question, about his

dao.

The man replies

that he has none. " I dive with the swirls and surface with theeddies . I merely follow the

dao of the water and have none of my

97

V 1 T A L

own:' H aving no

N O U R ! S H M E N T

dao of his own, he

weds that of the water, heed

ing its vagaries: he plunges into the curl of the wave and lets itcarry him to the surface with its swell . H e can surf without aboard by allowing the tide to breathe him in and out. Since he hasentrusted himself to its thrust without resistance, it relinquishesits hold on him without damage . To speak in such a case of a pro cedure or

dao

would mean that he was not yet completely in

phase with the element. It would also reveal a degree of separate,

manipulative , and therefore inhibiting individuality. N o fissurethat might allow a subj ect (of autonomous initiative) to emergein the face of its " obj ect" is evident here . From the boat to thestream, the instrument has become the element: I no longer require dexterity or seamanship ; I simply

evolve.

At this final stage,

when the way of proceeding has been completely integrated,

"before I can see how it is so, it is so." It necessarily

happens this

way: what comes to pass is not only "natural" but also "fate."b Just

as we follow the swimmer in water, so might we follow a dancer

on earth . We watch the dancer slide from movement to move ment in obedience to isome unknown yet unbreachable law thatnevertheless does not oblige him to inquire into what he is doing.H e executes the steps of the dance perfectly because all his gesture s seem as inevitable as " fate , " as Zhuangzi s o p ertinentlyremarks. He has made himself thoroughly susceptible to the pureinternal logic of the process that guides him so that he no longerrecognizes any separation or secession, least of all between bodyand spirit.To achieve perfection through processive induction alone, throughthe assimilation of the art to such a degree that actions are nolonger deliberate and all procedures are forgotten, is the way of

thrift.

"The artisan Shui could turn out [obj ects 1 as perfect as if

they had been made with compass and square. His finger changedin harmony with the thing, and his mind was never consulted. So

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his insides were concentrated and unobstructed:'12 Here again is

proof that the level of the spiritual, which transcends the tangibleand accommodates the natural (and perfect) achievement of theeffect is to be distinguished from, indeed opposed to , the appliedand anxious activity of the "heart-spirit:' Since sufficiency stemsfrom the process itself and cannot be found deliberately, and sincethis same sufficiency, upon achieving p erfection , "forgets itselfas sufficiency, " it cannot cost anything. When sufficiency is demanded from without, regardless of whether the "without" inquestion involve s my own or others' inj unctions, and when itimposes itself as a model and sets a goal for performance , it canonly be achieved with an expenditure of energy. In the previousane cdote in the same chapter ( hich is made entirely of anecdotes that expand in many directions and link up or contrast withone another) , the prince witnesses a demonstration of carriagesthat "drive back and forth in a perfectly straight line" and "turnright and left as precisely as if guided by a compass:'13 Since thehorses are made to turn as sharply as "the corners of a buckle, " itis easy to predict that they will soon tire . For in the end, the principal question is how to preserve the vital. Yet the pursuit of anygoal, the quest for any end, even happiness, wastes vitality.

99

CHAPTER N I N E

E x e m p t fr o m H a p p i n e s s

The point on which I have found philo s opher friends most un

compromising is this: happiness, they say, clearly concerns everyone . Any other viewpoint is impossible ; human existence dependson it according to Western philosophy. One could counter thattruth, whose atavistic association with the philosophy of b eingand dependence on an expectation of revelation are well known,is ultimately the primary figure in the advent and formation ofspirit. Or, that reason, in its demonstrative function and throughits over cultivation, pervade s the history of Western thought.Still , happine s s persists as an unquestioned universal goal, for" who would n o t want happiness?" That p e o ple do not agreeabout the content of happiness is a truism that has been repeatedsince Aristotle, but this has in no way diminished the normativestatus of the idea. Thus to suppose that somewhere a certain ideaof happiness did not develop, at least implicitly, is to forge a culturalist fiction that cannot withstand serious scrutiny. Thus, it isbest not to try. Accordingly, what I have to say on this score hasoften been dismissed.It seems to me that the thought of happiness stems from a fixation (in the analytic sense: the mind dwells on it and cannot let go) .It implies a concept that, if not disjunctive, is at least adversarial101

V 1T

N O U R 1 S H M E N T

unhappiness) ; it hints at

or in anvo case

dissociation (between quest and satisfaction) ; and, above all, it is

grafted onto a philosophy of finality (happiness, we have alwaysbeen told , is the ultimate goal) . Chinese thought dissolves thiscoagulated cluster of notions so completely that it exempts itselffrom its demands - and , I hope, will exempt us as well, in our ownminds , as we become more familiar with it. " F e e ding my life "opens up a possibility other than happiness, because feeding fallswithin the purview of a logic of refinement and transformationthat develops separately from the logic of quest and seizure . As wehave seen, to be "in good shap e , " in fine fettle, with abilities assharp as the butcher's knife , is not to be "happy." Here we confront two different perspectives, two realms whose meanings donot intersect. When someone asks familiarly, "How's it going?"and we answer, "Fine," without having anything else to say orwithout needing to say anything else, there is an implicit agree ment a t work. A logic o f passage, o r of the " viable , " grounds thestatements and does not need to be pointed out because we knowin advance that our attitude is shared. The discreet affirmation islike a password, a way of slipping past a barrier, that enables us tobear daily witness to our being-alive. Speech is turned back onitself and even erased from consciousness: to say m ore would beto break the spell, and to speak of "happiness" would cause it toimplode. In fact, it would be dissonant and even a little crude .Zhuangzi remarks on this unambiguously i n passing (by the by,because he has no need to debate the point) : "Do not be an initiator of [for] happiness, do not be an introducer of [for] unhappi ness:'! In other words, the beginning of wisdom lies i n reducingthe gap between the two by going back to a point prior to theirdissociation in order to ground them in a single all-encompassingcontext. This, he insists (along with Laozi ) , is the only way toenter into a philosophy of immanence (or of the "way, " of passage102

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F R O M

H A P P ! N E S S

or process) . 2 To separate them and to grant priority to one of

them - happiness - is at the same time to evoke and implicate theother - unhappiness. Similarly, to pride oneself on maintainingorder is to recognize the possibility of disorder and to prepare aplace for it. In this sense, "order" is indeed "the promoter of disorder, " not s o much because order brings disorder in its wakebut, more initially (notionally) , because order needs disorder if itis to make sense by antithesis. 3Goal and happiness have been deeply associated throughout thehistory of Western thought, to the point that this association haslong been a tradition - it is thought's ground, foundation, ambience. Aristotle's

Nicomachean Eth'ics begins and

ends with it, treat

ing it as its ahypothetical articulation, b eyond which it cannot go

and does not think to question.4 In this respect, Freud followedAristotl e , freely conceding that originality o n such a subj e c twas impossible . On this point, apparently, thought can make n oprogres s . Although the o n e conceived of happiness i n terms o fm a n ' s proper function and therefore i n relation to h i s highestcapacity, reason (so that happiness is contemplation) , while theother, by contrast and in reaction, conceived of it in terms of thepleasure principle and therefore on the "model" of sexual orgasm(from which our most intense experience of satisfaction comes) ,both nevertheless agreed from the outset on the essential p oint, asif escape from the orbit of this agreement, or, rather, this redundancy, were impossible . Every art, every investigatio n , everyaction , every choice tends toward an end, said Aristotle moregenerally, and that end is its good . These ends form a hierarchyculminating in a single end that depends on no other and is validin itself, autarchic, ultimate, and unique: the end in itself, which isthe sovereign good, about whose nature everyone agrees and hasno choice but to agree . That is "happiness:' "This happiness seems

V i r A L

N O U R ! S H

E N T

to be, to the highest degree , a perfect end." Alone among ends, it

is never chosen with anything other than itself in mind. In

lization and Its Discontents,

Civi

Freud starts with a similar premise,

with no inkling that any other beginning is possible . Let us there

fore b egin with the sempiternal question of the purpose of life .Although i t i s impossible t o answer so general a question i n anybut religious terms, we can nevertheless agree about the purposeof

our

life . " The answer to this can hardly be in doubt ": men

"strive after happiness:' They want to become happy and stay thatway. 5 N o debate is possible. The point is repeated over and overagain.6 O nly the rhetoric varies.The fact that Aristotle immediately distinguishes between twotypes of ends, that of the work and that of the activity - where thefirst is transitive and leads to a distinction between the productand the operation that produced it (between the house and theconstruction, say) and the second is immanent and has no otherend than itself (vision for sight) - changes nothing. Nor does thefact that one has to distinguish, as Freud did, between positive andnegative goals , betwe en the avoidance of suffering and the experience of pleasure (happiness in the strict sense pertains only to thelatter) . Once these distinctions are made, both find that happinessis unattainable yet insist that the quest for it cannot and should notbe abandoned. This is commonplace , to be sure, but it is unshakable. Philosophy, which usually tries so hard to shun such banalities , submits to this one without a second thought. Suddenly, itsinventiveness is nowhere to be found. The happy life as contemplative life is too lofty for the human condition: reserved for thegods, it is accessible to man, Aristotle says in a much- celebratedpassage, only insofar as he is capable of becoming a god. Freud ismore p e ssimistic, or, rather, he is situated at a m ore advancedstage of cultural neurosis. He claims that civilization, by repressing instinct, thwarts the satisfaction from which happiness de-

M P T

F R O ,/I

A P P ! N E S S

rives , and, furthermore, that we desire a happiness that lasts, but

when left to our own devices can experience pleasure only bycontrast and therefore episodically. In contrast to the harmoniousstate of which we dream , ecstasy requires discontinuity to b eeffective; indeed, a t a more basic level, i t thrives o n negativity. A si s well known, " any p ersistence of a situation desired b y the pleasure principle yields only a tepid feeling of comfort." What vestige of (humanist?) propriety, or what reluctance to draw tooclose to the flam e , prevented Freud from ultimately acceptingwhat G oethe had said so well (and which Freud dismissed with anote that it was "perhas exaggerated" ) : "Anything is bearable buta stretch of sunny days"? For there is no escaping what Freud himself demonstrated: not only, as men will complain, that the worldand civilization stand opposed to man ' s happiness, but also thatman, without daring to admit it, does not

desire the

happiness to

which he pretends to aspire.

It is clear that, no sooner had a Western ideology singled out theidea of happiness from the continuity of process and set it forth as"the desirable"

par excellence, while also

conceiving of it as unat

tainable or - worse still - intrinsically unbearable, than it became

trapped in a contradictory formulation that easily lent itself to various dramatizations of " existence." Ideology no longer reflected"life" in the true sense of the word - the life of constant flow, ofthe discreet and fleeting, that can be said to b e "going well" without cause for alarm. It rather felt itself provoked to multiply theoretical dramatizations and tabulations (which have continuallyinj ected new life into philosophy) so as to chart a vanishing linethrough this ideological aporia for each p eriod - a vanishing linethat establishes perspective but also a line of strength, for this tension has m otivated Western history as much as Western thought.In the West, each successive generation has tried to conquer hap piness anew by making a "revolution" of some kind, whether out1 05

V I T A L

N O U R I S H M E N l

of generosity or ingenuousness. H appiness has also b e en a con

stant source of inspiration for We stern literature . Was not thenovel, in particular, destined to deepen its meaning and indefatigably exploit the pathos of this most visceral of contradictions?I find it strange , moreover, that within this framework therewas no possibility of achieving distance from the broader teleology that concerns happiness. It was able to do so with naturalphilosophy (in the Renaissance , thus paving the way for a mechanistic physics) and, more recently, with the philosophy of history(thus putting an end to the anticipation of paradise and ecstaticreconciliations on earth as in heaven) . The analysis of things moreintimate and fundamental, however, remain tied to the goal- seeking vocation, which is repeatedly invoked in psychological explanation. For instance, what are we to make of the fact that Freudconceived of the "instinct" or "drive ," that "borderland conceptbetween the mental and the physical," or the soul and body, primarily in terms of a "goal"? Satisfaction can be achieved " only bysome change related to the intended goal of the internal stimulus:' And, "avoiding stimuli is the goal of muscular movements:'7And so on. Leaving aside its "compulsive" character and its "source"in physical stimuli, the "drive, " like art or action in Aristotle , isdefined here entirely in terms of the end toward which it is directed - the "obj ect" of the drive being nothing other than that"in which or by which" it attains its goal. As in Aristotle , we finda hierarchy of proximate and intermediate goals on the way to thedrive's "ultimate goal," which is said to be "invariable:' Althoughthe idea of finality ensures that there is a logical connection between this concept of the drive (which is the psychological notionmost deeply rooted in the vital) and the cult of happiness positedas an ideal end, I find the assumption of an

aim

and the overall

construction surprisingly abstract throughout. There is a striking

resemblance to Aristotle's nature , which "aims" and "wants" (and106

E X E M P T

F R O M

H A P P I N E S S

which i s , of course , consistent with the dualist concept of the

drive as a "represention" of somatic stimuli at the psychic level).Indeed, I believe what makes the idea of process capable of atrue cleavage in the history of philosophy is that it requires nonotion of a goal: a process has no aim and does not tend towardan end that guides its development (in this respect, it differsfundamentally from potential being in Aristotle) . Rather, it main

tains itself through regulation; it goes on - the process continues.

When someone dies, we commonly say, or, rather, let drop, " Lifegoes on , " as though nothing else remained to b e said once allarguments and consolations have been exhausted. But a processcan also become unregulated , ef,l counter an obstacle, or veer offcourse and end up dwindling away to nothing. In other words, aprocess

does not lead to

but

ends in ,

and is measured by its result.

That is why life should be thought of in terms of process:

" das

Leben als Prozess, " as Hegel put it. 8 And that is also why, when certain Western thinkers reintroduce finality (even when they areadvocates of the idea of process, which is as true of Freud as it isof H egel) , they seem to fall back into architectonic and legitimizing m e t aphysical pattern s , which cause them to turn awayfrom their own undoubted successes in analyzing history and psychic life .Accordingly, it might b e instructive to question why Chinesethought b arely developed an idea of finality and consequentlynever made the idea of happiness explicit. Or, rather, why it showedso little interest in happiness. Perhaps the failure to develop anidea should count as an event in the history of thought. I recognize, however, that answering this question n o doubt requires thatwe accomplish a very difficult feat of intellectual accommodation(in the sense in which we speak of accommodation of the eyethrough an automatic change in focal length) , for it demands that1 07

V I T A L

N O U R i

E N T

we free ourselves from the expectations the idea of finality pro

j ects in the Western context. The task calls for patience and repe tition (rather than a n effort of the intellect) until the keystonethat keeps our whole notional edifice intact has been removed.Only then can we appreciate the coherence of Chinese wisdom of wisdom, moreover, as strategy. For in China not even strategyis guided by finality. One cannot appreciate any of the ancientChinese arts of war until one understands that, in China, the idealgeneral has no definite, fixed goals in mind, or even, strictly speaking, any aims. Instead, he evolves so he can exploit the potentialof situations in which he recognizes the "benefit"

(Ii,

a very Chi

nese notion ) , or, failing that, so he can exploit his adversary ' spotential b y turning the tables o n him , transforming the situation.When the enemy arrive s "reste d , " I begin by " wearing himdown"; when he arrives "united , " I b egin by "disuniting" him;when he arrives "with a full stomach," I begin by "starving" him;and so on. In other words, in each case I draw him into a processnot so much of destruction as of destructuration (again, transformation), so that when atl ast I engage him in combat, he is alreadydefeated. Success is in the nature not of a goal achieved but of aresult, like the dropping of a ripe fruit. From a syntactic point ofview, the relation to which Chinese thought generally gives priority is consecution (ze: "so that";

er: "it follows that";

and so on) !

Chinese lacks the range of cases and the panoply of prepositions

that broaden the spectrum of finality in Greek. In notional terms,moreover, Chinese thought is familiar with the motif of the targetand aiming at the centerthe mapof action

(zhong) . It also recognizes the design and

(tu) .9 At times it even resorts to the idea of an obj ective

(di, especially in legal thought) . b Yet it did not develop

any of these notions into coherent explanatory concepts. to

Further proof of this assertion can be seen in the fact that it

was necessary to translate "goal" into m odern Chinese (as108

mudi or

E X

M P T

F R O M

P P I N E S S

in response to the 'vVest. In place of the Greek preoccu

pation withhave called

te]os and finality, Chinese thought emphasized what I

being in phase, with s uccess measured not by confor

mity to some aim but rather by the capacity to induce forgetful

ness. "A shoe is adequate if it makes us forget the foot. A belt isadequate if it makes us forget the waist . . . . Let adequacy b eginand nonadequacy cease and you achieve the adequacy that makesyou forget adequacy."l1 Instead of the idea of destination, Zhuangzi offers that of "free evolution"

(you), d proceeding in comfort, at

will, without a designated port and without anxiety over the outcome. Yet might there' not be some ambition or will to attain? In

Zhuangzi we read these worps of Confucius's: " Fish go

the

[tend]

among themselves in the water; men go [tend] among themselves

in the

dao.

Since fish tend among themselves in the water, it is

enough to dig a pond, and they will find nourishment; since mentend among themselves in the

dao,

it is enough to stop bustling

about, and life will decide:'12 Here, "to tend" means to becomeabsorbed in myself and forget my destination; instead of "goingtoward," I "go among"free

evolution) .

(xiang:

a fixed

direction gives way to care

dao as a way that leads to

Far from thinking of the

(truth or wisdom or what have you), human beings swim in this

milieu of endless movement, going around and around as easily as" fish in water" - the triviality of the image , in the Chinese language as well as in our own, speaks volumes about how unproblematic it has b ecome. It allows us to see that once we have givenup goals and the burdens that go along with them ,

life itself de

cides how it will go. Once fre e d of all imp ediments, life itselfis capable of inducing and inciting, so that the result flows constantly and consequentially to the point of satiety. There is noneed to proj e c t the result some distance away (necessitating aquest) or to turn it into a fixed finality.The absorption of finality into a logic of consequence led to a1 09

V ! T

I,

hi

U R ! S H M t:: r'J T

reduction of the idea of happiness. True, we find a notion of felic

ity in the form of favor bestowed by heaven or by one's ancestorsin the most ancient Chinese thought. Yet even when it is said tobe "limitless" and associated with the royal mandate, this felicityis essentially material in nature, taking the form of rank, honor, orprosperity (see the notions ofju ,

lu,

and

xiu in the Shijing).e13 We

also find this in celebrations of the New Year: " Lots of money, lotsof children ." In this sense, it is close to what the Greek eudaimoniawas initially: the "good share" or "good daimon" awarded by thegods. Here is yet another occasion to observe that the gap b e tween different civilizations is found n o t so much i n their penumbral origins as in the theoretical divergence that occurs as thoughtreflects upon itself and justifies its own constructs. In the Greekworld, the idea of happiness eventually broke away from the ideaof felicity bestowed from without by superior powers in order totake on a deeper significance in the "soul," which became themedium of its demands. For H eraclitus, it was each man's owncharacter, his

ethos that became his

daimon and made him happy

or unhappy. 14 For Demdcritus, happiness (as

eudaimonia)

"is not

constituted of flocks or gold" ; rather, the soul is its " dwelling

place:' 15 The construction of the notion would end with the constitution of the various parts of the soul and the assimilation (inPlato) to

theoria,

upon a foundation of finality. From then on, of

cours e , the Greeks held fast to happine s s as the universal end,

because ultimately they could not imagine man tending towardanything else - indeed, they could not imagine him as not "tend

(ephiesthai followed by the genitive: the verb with

Nicomachean Ethics begins) something. H ave we fol

ing toward"which the

lowed i n their wake ? They imposed this axiom on the Western

mind so thoroughly we have forgotten how much this

construction

existential

of happiness owed to a peculiar syntax, a syntax of

ascription and subordination, who s e resource s their construct

110

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exploited . T h e structure of ancient Chinese, which is formulaic

and not much indebted to syntax but embellished by effects ofparallelism based on the polarity of yin and yang, gave rise to aninterplay of correlations and alternations that led to the expression of constant variation within a process, and consequently to aconcern for

vital evolution.

The question, however, cannot be circumscried simply by ex

ploring the vicinity of the associated notion. It has many branchesand opens up fissures that strike deep into the ground of thought.Is it possible to conceive of human ideals without a concept offinality?

Zh uan8zi

examin e s a ange of ideals , from the ascetic

rej e ction of the world to the full embrace o f long life . Some"delve into the spirit in pursuit of more noble conduct," withdrawfrom the world, adopt eccentric manners, and complain and vituperate in the name of principle. These hermits of the m ountainsand lakes devote themselves to "desiccation through asceticism"or to " drowning themselves in the gulfs ." O thers "contemplatehumanity," " equity," and all the moral virtues as they seek to perfect themselves : they are devoted to ensuring the peace of theworld and to "teaching course after course to their schools:' Stillothers "speak of exploits and seek to establish their reputations";they determine the rites to be observed by princes and vassals andtell people how to behave in the highest as well as the lowest society: they are devoted to "ensuring that order reigns in the world"and "to honoring their prince and strengthening the state:' Oth ers "haunt ponds and swamps" and like to fish in solitude, shunning all o ccupations: these "guests of the rivers and lake s " aredevoted to "enjoying idleness." Finally, there are those who devote themselves to breathing exercises and practice gymnastics toachieve longevity: they are dedicated to "nourishing their physicalform" and "growing as old as Pengzu: ' 16III

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Two important figures are missing from this review of ideal

lives: the philosopher and the priest. Neither the desire for knowledge nor the mystical vocation is considered; contemplation andthe contemplative life are not mentione d . Note , too , that thesevarious lives are presented in parallel rather than arranged hierarchically; no aspiration is said to prevail over or dominate anyother. In particular, the last two type s - the carefree and un occupied life in nature and the pursuit of long life , which usuallydefine the limits of the Daoist tradition - are granted no priority.The ideal is not detachment from or superiority over others. Noris it to promote a superior end taken as a token of the destinationtoward which we are headed. There is no construction if ends oriented toward some ultimate end. Where , then, might the position of the sage be in this panoply? H e has no designated place, nofixed and invaiable position that would allow us to characterizehim. Nor does he occupy some other place not mentioned here.Zhuangzi reproduces the list, systematically maintaining the acquired benefits while denying the functional obj ective , and indoing so he shifts from tUe logic of finality to that of consequence.Concerning the sage, it is said: "Without having to delve into thespirit, he has a lofty life; without having to study morality, he perfects himself; without having to accomplish great deeds, he causesorder to reign in the world; without having to live by a river or anocean, he enj oys leisure; without being obliged to perform respiratory gymnastics , he achieves long life : ' 17 He benefits from allthes e possibilitie s at once , achieving the result without havingaspired to it. He does not aim at any of them and is therefore notlimited by their incompleteness. The solution is not one of synthesis but of relinquishment, and thus obtaining without striving:"In all of this there is nothing he does not give up, yet there isnothing he does not have:'Just as " superior virtue" does not seek to be virtuous, which is11 2

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why it never falls short of virtue (whereas "inferior virtue," which

seeks virtue without end, is never more than virtue narrowly construed) , 18 the full effect here is free to come about because thesage does not make a goal of it. " Gentle and detached, he does notincline one way or the other or become stuck in his way, which istherefore endless, and all good follows him." The mistake that allothers make is to remain "attached." Not only do they limit therange of possibilities from the outset by choosing priorities, buttheir attachmen t also creates a clenching-fixation that diminishesthe ability of the effect to come sponte sua. Only when an effect isnot sought can it flow i.n all its fullness; only then can we allow itto proceed. We must not cling to carefree idleness if we wish toenj oy a happy insouciance. By th e same token, it is pointless todedicate ourselves meticulously to the practices of long life if wewish to achieve longevity naturally (there i s no need to "take"vacations - as we are wont to say, as if what we anticipate s oe agerly could b e seized - if w e wish to be on vacation i n ourspirit, and so on) . The moment we take the effect as the obj ect ofa quest ( singling it out in order to make an "obj ect" of it) , themoment we take it as our goal, we are reduced to grasping it,which is not only costly but also invariably disappointing, owingto its limitation. Happiness becomes unattainable, because it isalways pushed farther into the distance, or it becomes unbearable,simply because grasping it destroys its value as an end still capableof inspiring desire.The "floating" word admirably expresses this ability to avoid focusing on any goal so as to allow ourselves to be borne along by neverending effect: "His life is like floating, his d eath like resting." 19H ere, "floating" is not a sign of the ephemeral or the threat ofinconstancy, much less of insubstantiality. In this respect it differssharply from the "floating world" depicted in Japanese ukiyo-e

engraving, whichlife's fugitive , rare, and painful charm.Floating is the ability to avoid getting locked in any one positionor tending in any particular direction. It means to be in constantmotion, susceptible to the ebb and flow of respiration , withoutincurring expense or risking resistance of any kind . The word"float" negates all thought of a destination and therefore cancelsout any idea of finality, thus contradicting better than any otherword the aspiration to and quest for happiness. It expresses betterthan any other the maintenance and nourishment of the vital. Tofloat is to designate no port and set no goal, while maintainingoneself in an emergent state - alert and unencumbered. It is notthe vagueness of hesitation, ambivalence, or drift (or the adventurous intoxication of the unguided, as Rimbaud would have it) .Boats that float easily at anchor in a bay undulate with the wavesand can animate a landscape. "To float," with its connotation ofavailability, stands in contrast to the drama of crossing (confronting perils that end in death: what meaning has such a voyage ?) and the torpor of immobility (the morbid eternity of aworld of essences) . "To float" is not to advance toward or to standfrozen but to move and to change at the world's b ehest: " Thenature of water is such that when it is not troubled, it is clear, andwhen it is not moving, it is flat; but when it is held back and doesnot flow, it can no longer be clear:'2oExtending the connotations of "flotation ," " clarity" avoidsboth agitation and nonreplenishment, turbidity and rot. There isneither precipitation nor stagnation, and if there i s no tendingtoward anything, there is no holding back. Clarity, whether inwater or in the realm of the vital, comes from calm flow and easeof passage, from movement that is unforced as well as unimpeded.It comes from fluidity alone . "There is movement, but along anatural ('celestial') course, and this is the way to feed one's spiritual dimension (yang sben) :' H ere , of course, " spirit" does not

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mean an entityto thebut refers to an endless unfolding of one's abilities by way of refinement. As we have seen,the expression commonly refers to calm relaxation as a means offully exploring one ' s faculties, j ust as water that is not agitatedflows smoothly and clearly. Tension comes from having a goal: byrelinquishing this goal and the tension that comes from striving toachieve it, we open ourselves to the flow of the vital, which constantly clears and purifies, stimulating and replenishing life .Adequacy is necessary if the inner relaxation and contentmentthat nourish vitality are to be achieved, but how are we to understand "adequacy" if there is no goal? What sort of adequacy canthere be in flo ating? A passage in the Zh uangzi puts us on theright track by rejecting the answer we expect: "He regrets nothing when he goes too far; when he performs adequately, he takesno credit:'21 We expect the opposite - that the sage will experience "regret" when he goes too far and exceeds the limit ormisses the target. Indeed, the passage was misinterpreted in thisway by commentators who b elieved that the sage must performadequately in every situation. But other commentators encouragea more literal interpretation: if the sage has no regrets when hegoes too far (and does not congratulate himself when he hits themark) , it is because he has no aim of his own, and hence no opportunity to seize it, and is therefore in no danger of failing to doso. The kairos structure disappears for him; the adequacy /inadequacy distinction no longer holds, not because he transcends itbut because it no longer makes sense. Since he is "floating," he isno longer responsible for whether he hits the target or not, so heno longer deserves blame or credit. All he does is respond to theincitements that move him, and since these come from the world'sflux and play a role in its replenishment, there is no longer anyreason to ask whether they are justified. At this stage (extinctionof all autonomy) , responsibility and loss are no longer possible:115

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Leave a boat in a ravine or a mountain in a

one can then say

that it is in a safe place. Yet a strong enough person could still comein the dead of night and carry (it] off on his back without attractingthe attention of those who are asleep. When the small is placed inthe large (or "the small as well as the large"] , it fits , and yet still itmay be lost. But when the whole world is placed in the whole world,so that (it] cannot escape, all the conditions of an unchanging realityare met.2 2

At this stage, "the sage evolves at a level where nothing can escapeand everything exists." H e "finds good in early death" as well as"in death in old age ." H e appreciates the b eginning as well as theend and experiences no sense of lack or failure . Wisdom consistsin expanding the range of things where distinctions between adequacy and inadequacy and between happiness and its opposite nolonger apply, so that the whole world appears as a process "involving countless transformations that have no end:'23 The "incalculable j oy" of achieving this would, in fact, be rather banal if itinvolved a mystical vocation and there were a God to authenticatethe feeling of plenitude . Here, however, there is no reference toanother world. Indeed, no trace remains of a world behind theworld, like the one beyond all the cosmic cycles that still hauntsStoicism. It is enough to "place [or lodge 1 the world within theworld" (or, more precisely, the "under heaven" within the "underheaven" ) , for there is no place here for anything like absence or,consequently, a quest, which any end worthy of aspiration mustsubsum e . Put another way, the sage "lodges" realitie s "in theiruses" - he restores them to their common vocation of "communicating" and "passing"f and thus makes them "opportune :'24 H egive s them shelter, as o n e finds lodging for a guest at a n inn :although the arrangement is temporary, the fundamental relationship remains the same. H e accompanies them in their transition,116

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which is therefore identified as nnC) C' " ", VP rather than

The transitional is thus not impermanent but a useful element inthe vast "operation" of things (daD) .To be sure, the word "useful" is still too laden with finality,too stoic, too remote from the versatility of things that evolve. Toexpress what we are calling the "constancy" of countless transformations, it is better to rely on a certain alternating parallelism ofexpression which imitates the motion of a transition without beginning or end, eschewing both the enigma of the beginning andthe drama of the end: "Encountering, he does not oppose; surpassing, he does not hold on:'25 The sage welcomes but does notcling. The s e phrase s artfully expre ss the avoidance of two extremes, saturation and exhaustion, each leading inevitably to theother, wherein lies the source of the tragic. So long as transitionsustains itself without flagging, life persists in the endless flow:"He takes in without filling himself; he draws out without emptying himself'26If there is a common motif in the religious sphere, surely it is thatof the soul as mirror, the idea that the pure and pacified soul canreflect by recording within what Gregory of Nyssa calls "theimages and forms of virtues exhibited by God:' From its earliestoccurrences in Plato and Plotinus to its magnification in the writings of the church fathers, the mirror was honored for its abilityto represent truth faithfully (if passively) while also partaking ofthe divine . In a celebrated study, Paul Demieville distinguishedtwo functions of the soul's mirror: to demonstrate the unrealityof the phenomenal world, and to stand as a symbol of the absolute . 2 7 Demieville 's broad comparative approach finds thematiclinks among the thinkers of India, the Chan, the Arab world, andChristianity. In Zhuangzi, however, the mirror finds no such mystical employment and is understood in an entirely different way:1 17

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man uses his spirit as a mirror: he does not

" Theaccompany [things J or anticipate them, he responds to them without hoarding. That is why he uses up the things [reflected in him 1without b eing hurt by them:'28 The virtue of the mirror is thatit accepts but does not hold: it reflects everything it encountersbut allows things to pass by without clinging to them. It does notreject or retain. It allows things to appear and disappear withoutclinging to them. That is why its capacity can be used endlesslywithout ill effect. Indeed, the mirror symbolizes the way a thingcan serve as a passage while retaining its capacity and never wearing out.

llS

CHAPTER TE N

O n H y giene; o r , T h e D e s p e r a teD esire to Endure

When, after a protracted agony, the political and social structures

of the Chinese empire collapsed in the late second century at theend of the H an dynasty, individuals were left with virtually norefuge from recurrent outbreaks of violence and the exactions ofdespots other than to withdraw into themselves . "Feeding one'slife" became a primary theme of meditation for many literati. XiKang, one of the most fascinating personalities and most brilliantand cultivated minds of the third century, chose the phrase as thetitle of his principal essay. l C enturies after Zhuangzi, he returnedto his teaching and elaborated on it in his reflections on longevity.As D onald H olzman writes in his introduction to Xi Kang'sthought, he understood the phrase "to fee d life " in "the richestand most varied way: to feed the body, to feed the spirit, to feedthe soul; ultimately he was concerned with the quintessentialproblem of religion, and the goal of Hi K'ang [Xi Kang] was hissalvation, his ' Long Life ,' as he puts it, his eternal life:'2Without denying in any way the fact that "feeding life" is oneof Xi Kang's central concern s, I believe that the example of thesentence above suffices to show the extent to which the themeloses its distinctive meaning, which i s diluted and distorted assoon as the European ideas ingenuously listed here are deployed

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as if there could be no question of their relevance: the "body," the

" spirit, " the " soul," the "religious" (posed, to be sure, as a "problem " ) , to say nothing of the "goal" of "salvation" or "eternal life :'Indeed, I find the case enormously instructive, and valuable as awarning. The Western sinologist has here laid bare our entire the oretical panoply i n a single sentence, and, having done this, he i simmediately caught up i n a series of deductions over which h eexercises no control, which inevitably take him farther and far ther from t h e thought on which he claims to b e commenting.Once "body" has been posited, its companion "soul" appears nextto it; the "religious" emerges as a level of analysis required for thearticulation of these two notions; "problem" and "goal" face off(because when existence is conceived as a problem, we begin toset goals for ourselves), with the tension between them definingthe field of thought; and, ultimately, the only (logical) way outis "salvation:' How could "eternal life" not be invoked in the endas the legitimate culmination of all hop e ? Yet ancient Chinesethinkers did not think in terms of eternity (associated with being)but of the " endlessndis" of duration, and , as the commentatorHolzman himself states, the Chinese thinker spoke not of eternallife but only of "long life:' Thus we see how a coherence has beensuperimposed on the material without the European commentator 's even noticing - a coherence that proj ects our expectations and reestablishes the European ideological and intellectualmatrix, which constitutes a system, or a habit. It is the very habitthat my entire text up to this point has sought to destabilize, orfrom which I have patiently endeavored to escape and open up anew avenue of thought. Until we begin - locally - to decategorize and recategorize, and cease to believe that we can use (especially) our most general ideas, we may think we have traveledwhen in fact we have not left our armchairs . Otherwise, to alterthe metaphor, when we pull up our nets, we find nothing in them120

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hut known P \C, L 1 ,"" , " existential" ideas with which ' w e are alreadyfamiliar.Chinese thinkers, meanwhile, have elaborated an alternativeframework for thought. Some say that immortality can be achievedthrough study. In other words, we need not die. By contrast, otherssay that nowadays the longest life span is no more than 1 20 years,as has always been the case. The idea that one can live longer thanthat is myth or madness. "These two positions depart from reality."For on the one hand, unless we have seen immortals ourselves, it ispossible to believe in their existence only if we trust the reportsof those who claim to h"ve seen them. Clearly, such beings mustpossess an energetic breath very different from our own becauselongevity is natural to them , rafher than something obtainedthrough study or diligent application. (Since the quest for immortality does not concern us, let us set it aside . ) On the other hand, ifwe "direct and nourish" our own breath - energy, we acquire anability to adapt to the logic of the vital and thus to make full use ofthe vitality that has been imparted to us. In this way, we can live "atbest some thousands of years and at worst some hundreds." Thequestion then becomes how best to prolong one 's life, since the possibility of doing so depends entirely on how we manage things .Why do most men fail in this enterprise ? Because they are not sufficiently attentive to the subtle ways in which they deviate fromtheir ambition. They fail to understand that our vital potential canproduce a larger or a smaller yield, in the agricultural or financialsense: a good field is said to yield ten hu per mou of land, but if onecultivates the land more intenSively by dividing it into smallerparcels for the sake of better irrigation, a yield ten times greatercan b e achieve d . Similarly, market transactions can be made toyield many time s the usual profit. Though such extraordinaryresults may be surprising, they are not fantastic hopes but straightforward consequences of the art of management. Why shouldn 't121

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we manage our vital potential as \'\'e would any other form of cap ital, since we know that capital is something we are bound tosquander unless we learn what it takes to make it productive?"Feeding one 's life , " the phrase used to translate our traditional notion of hygiene in China today (yang-shengja),a is nothing other than this art of management. Before the word "hygiene"became associated with public health (and even s ecurity in thewake of an expanding science of disease), it had a more primary,private sense, yet the European concept still strikes me as relatively impoverished compared with the Chinese one. In any case,it appeared only in the great medical treatises of the ancients, andeven there it occupied only a small place and did not intersectwith the concerns of the philosophers. Greek thinkers as ancientas Plato were able to define health, but it never occurred to themto make the art of preserving health and prolonging life the principal axis of their philosophy. The primary concern of Westernmedicine has, of course, been to explain and treat illness. Its foundation is anatomy, and its practice culminates in surgery. It isextremely interventiohist. One has only to listen to its contemporary vocabulary, which is almost traumatic in its bluntness: thesurgeon "operates" on his patient; the physician tells us to submitto "a minor procedure:' By contrast, Chinese medicine is foundedon its pharmacopoeia. Chinese doctors scarcely distinguish b e tween nutriments and drugs, s e e no discontinuity between therapy and geriatrics, and prescribe sub stances primarily to promotelongevity, secondarily to enhance vital energy, and only thirdlyfor therapeutic purposes. Chinese medicine is said to be " soft," asopposed to Western medicin e , and the emotional overtones ofthis simple adjective serve to define a genre. Sur g ery is invokedonly as a last resort, after gymnastics and massage, dietetics, rulesof life , breathing exercises, and visualization practices (that enableus to keep an eye on " spirits" in the body) .l22

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In his reflection on "feeding life , " which is indeed at the heart

of his thinking, Xi Kang attests to the foregoing in two ways. Inhis discussion of remedies , he mentions only the superior category, which "nourishes our lot of vitality," and the intermediatecategory, which "nourishes our nature:' (The two inferior remedies , acknowledged to be toxic, are traditionally assigned the roleof treating illness.) In addition, Xi Kang recommends preliminaryaction to alter conditions : one should take steps to prevent disease and weakness so as not to have to "intervene" more substantially at a later stage. (The same principles are at work in Chinesearts of strategy, according to which the enemy must be defeatedbefore he is attacked and, indeed, in order to forestall any needto attack him . ) This should be dne while we are still healthy,before the first symptoms of decrepitude appear. Once the process of weakening b egin s, Xi Kang note s , its effects accumulateprogres sively: first "declin e , " then "whitening, " then " aging, "then "decease" - all o f which happens without our noticing, a s ifit had no "beginning:'Such an evolution might b e thought "natural," or we m ightcomplain of the moment when the malady first struck us, withoutnoticing the "accumulation of dangers" that occurred prior to itsappearance. If the maj or mistake is thus to take "the first day wefeel ill" for the "beginning of the illness," it becomes legitimate,in contrast, for the art of " feeding life , " if develope d to theutmost, to deliver us from therapeutic obligations. If the afflictionof an organ is m erely the ultimate stage, we need never resort tosurgery. It becomes the physician's task to promote health ratherthan care for disease, just as it is the peasant's task, according toMengzi, to assist in the (natural) process of growth by hoeing thesoil in which shoots are rooted rather than pulling them out of theground to make them grow (or standing by the side of the field,content to watch) . 3 There will be no reason to opp o s e art to

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nature ,

techne to phusis as the Greeks did (or even to understand

phusis, as Aristotle did, by taking techne as the model) . To borrowan expression from Laozi (for the idea of processivity is most general in China) , what is necessary is not "to dare to act" but ratherto "help that which comes about by itself" ("of its own accord" ) .I n other words, w e must help life come t o life, as i t i s inclined todo on its own, just as the plant is inclined to grow.4The question of hygiene 's place and significance would seemsecondary, or in any case insufficiently noble in the eyes of philosophers, if it did not reveal something of far greater importanceabout an epistemological order, touching on the unspoken assumptions that precede all thought. In this instance, those assumptionshave to do with a question that might nevertheless seem moreimmediate and less constructed: not what life to choose, which isalready very abstract (because philosophy since Plato has beenvery fond of assigning role s ) , but how to organiz e , or, rather,"manage," one's life . If we approach it from the angle of managingthe vital, the thought bf life is accessible in a more elementary,more rooted, less proj ected way than it is in morality or religion.Once broached, the question of hygiene can serve as a powerfultheoretical instrument, because it helps to reveal what pattern ofnotions and ideas encouraged its development in one traditionand what other pattern obstructed it in the other. What complexbut logically interrelated approaches were driven by the implicitassumptions of Chinese thought to the point where they becamecentral to the reflections of a man of letters like Xi Kang, whileother theoretical orientations blocked the way in Greece andturned philosophy's attention in other directions ? When we follow the common theme of " self-control" or "self-governance,"which formed the basis of traditional hygienic thought in Europewhile it was being broadly developed in China, a point of contact

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between the two cultures appears. This

of contact has lessto do with the concepts themselves as with something more fun damental - the perspectives and orderingJimctions from which theconcepts are derive d . s And since a perspective can only be reflected in the gaze of another, I speak here of hygienic thought asan instrument that reveals what cannot otherwise be seen.The Greeks thought f difining health in many domains, particularly in the conception of the city. They did so in terms of thejust: just mixture and j ust measure (Aristotle) , or, Galen added,just measure of the homogeneous elements o f b o dies and justsymmetry of its heterogeneous p arts. It was a constitutional relation of p arts to whole that s erved as a paradigm for all Greekthought, recurring homologically in discipline after discipline : ingrammar and rhetoric, we find words made of letters, sentencesof words, periods of sentences; in geometry, we find lines made ofpoints ; in physics, we find corpuscles made of atoms; and so on.The same is true of health and of the city. The master notions ofancient and Renaissance theories were thus complexio-compositiounitas: "complexity," just "composition" in form, size, and quantity, and "unity" are coequal notions. Every malady consists in adisruption in one or more of these dimensions. Consequently,the Greeks conceived of he alth as their sculptors and paintersdreamed of the canonical beauty embodied in the nude (the artof the nude rested essentially on the integral relationship of partsto whole) . Galen himself, following Polyclitus , set out to find aprinciple common to the simple and the composite. This led himto conceive of the fabrication of the living in ideal terms as a creation of beauty - at least until his thought reached its limit andfoundered in the aporia of the formless, which he discovered inOn the Formation if the Fetus.6 Once again, it was the idea of themodel that prevailed in Greece. It became the source of the West'stheoretical strength, and was consecrated in mathematics (the1 25

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model of the model) , to the point 'where a distinction was drawn

in b etween model health and real health , or between absolutehealth and relative health. This allowed some latitude b etweenhealth as it was conceived of (paradigmatically) by philosophersand health as it was studied (pragmatically) by "physicians." Thisdivorce had important consequence s . Can absolute health beexperienced? Or does it condemn one to "eternal suffering," asGalen already perceived, because it is inevitably p osited as unattainable (in which case it is akin to "happiness" conceived as anideal end).Turn to the beginning of Celsus: you will find that the thesis ofhis first book of medicine - which is devoted , in accordance withthe teachings of Hippocrates, to the man in good health, san ushomo - fails to cohere because it lacks an over arching concept thatties it together, sets things in order, and justies its message. Celsusdraws his method essentially from rhetoric: the praise of varietas(modo . . . modo: "to be now in the country, now in the city," "sometimes to partake of a banquet, sometimes to abstain," and so on) .But this method of varr'ety lacks a foundation in a logic of regeneration through alternation, as in China. The structuring argumentsare those of just measure (sexual relations are "not to be indulgedin to excess or unduly avoided," and so on) and attending to theparticular, as opposed to general principles (the mode of life is tobe modified according to age , constitution, season, and so on).O therwis e, the text lap se s into an insipid recital of truisms:"When one has digested well, one can rise without danger"; "Oneshould s ometimes do more, sometimes less"; and so on. In heaping up so many banalities, the discourse actually becomes interesting, precisely because it raises the question of the uninteresting:What, in the West, is a discourse that is not constructed? Becauseabstraction fails to define health , and health cannot b e appre hended within a system - these being the two maj or theoretical126

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moves ,\vc learned from the Greeks - what we are left with is atext condemned to reel off a miscellaneous assortment of pre scriptions and recipes, a tedious inventory that has nowhere to go .By contrast, what notion lies at the heart of Xi Kang's essay, influencing all his reflections and leaving its mark on Chinese thoughtin general? I would translate it as " structure" or "internal coherence" in the " development of the vital" (sheng-li),C since everything involving health and longevity depends on the ability not todeviate at all from the coherence needed to maintain life . Beforebeing used in the modero era in a limited, scientific way to renderthe European word "physiology" into Chinese, this notion servedto tie medicin e , hygiene, and philosophy together in a singlewhole. The Chinese also conceived of health as equilibrium, but,as always, they understood this equilibrium in terms of an ongoing process (rather than a mathematical calculation or proportion): not as a norm of the j ust, with archetypal value, but as thatwhich allows the course of the world or of life to maintain itself,and thus to endure, through alternation and compensation modeled on the course of heaven. The principle of internal coherencein the development of the vital is thus a matter not of rule but ofregulation. Xi Kang never defines health in a canonical, the oretical mode, in comparison with ordinary health which might onlyseem wanting or, at best, a mere approximation of the ideal. Indeed, he is not concerned with the state of health, which, beingfixed, is always more or less abstract, and which the Greeks conceived of in relation to the ideal constitution. What interests himinstead is the life capital that health creates and that must b emaintained and cultivated by exercising the various correlationsb orn of its polarity ( expre s s e d as factors at once opposed andcomplementary, such as yin and yang) .I would therefore contrast the correlative logic of the Chinese

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and,the samewith the constitutiveof thewould contrast the synthetic harmony of the Greeks (growing outof the relationship of parts to whole) with the regulative harmonyof the Chinese ( allowing for the process to continue withoutend) . Because the Chinese approached the real not in terms of"being" but of invested "capacity" (de), reserves (of immanence:the dao), or resources, and because, having little interest in finality, they concentrated instead on functionality (the yong: d the discreet, continuous progression of things , not the great "why" ofthe world) , they saw "life " itself exclusively in terms of vitality.Thus the same Chinese verb, sheng,e means "to live," "to be born,"and "to engender." The verb for "to live" remains attached tothese two genetic verbs, so that "living" is not separated from theprocess by which it comes to pass: it does not lead into "existence" (according to the first etymological dictionary, the termsheng means to advance, to progress, in the sense in which vegetation grows by emerging from the e arth and pushing upward) .Accordingly, life potential is to be cultivated not by establishing amodel for it (to b e approached as a goal) but like a field (agriculture being the fundamental motif of all knowledge in this land offarmers ) . Knowledge of how it can be exploited and improvedshould be used to make it yield (or bear fruit) without exhaustingits potential.What is specific to "vital nourishment" is that it calls to mindboth the promotion and the prolongation of life. Since health andlongevity cannot be dissociated, there is no reason to choose between them. This is precisely what Francis Bacon warned againstat the dawn of modern Western thought, for he held this to beimpossible and therefore believed that different levels had to bedistinguished: "We warn men to distinguish clearly between thatwhich can make life healthy and that which can make it long, and128

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carefully to separate the two:'7 On the one hand , that which

serves to augment the activity of the mind and the vigor of thefunctions and to ward off disease "constantly detracts from thetotal span of life and accelerates the atrophy that constitutes aging:'Conversely, that which prolongs life and wards off the atrophy ofold age cannot help endangering health. The West based its hero ic construction of human existence on this inexorable and tragicconflict between a full and a long life (by living life to the full, 1consume myself ) . This tension between intensity and durationled to a privileging of health as an ideal state to the detriment ofits prolongation, whic4 could not be modeled . Thus the prolongation of life , "undeniably the most n oble part of medicin e , "according to Bacon, is nevertheless "an entirely new part, and onethat we lack completely:'8 It was at this point that a new understanding of medicine arose, one that was not merely negative orcurative but that at last discovered its true obj ect: it finally b e came a form of knowledge that was n o t hopelessly speculative. I tcould instead aspire t o become powerfully effective, even decisivein its application, so that, by exerting influence over the essential,it could begin to revolutionize the human condition. Renaissanceman, triumphant, discovered new powers due to the advancement of science and began to aspire to a mastery over nature socomplete as to counter its strength and even force it into "retreat"(from old age to youth , " remorari et retrovertere, " as Bacon putsit) . 9 Having made up his mind to appropriate his life as his ownproperty, indeed his only property, man began to reclaim it fromalienating grand narratives and to trust in his new knowledge topreserve it artificially: true Christians "may long in vain for thePromised Land and hold this world to be a wasteland, " yet still intheir wanderings in the desert they "would rather see their habitand sandals less used" ("I mean the body," Bacon adds in clarification, "which is like the habit and sandals of the sOUI" ) . l O

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Beneath the tired metaphor, ambition is conscious of its nov

elty. What has never been done (to prolong life) "cannot be doneother than in ways that have never been attempted:' But couldthis new knowledge, which rested on causality and served at thetime in the construction of mechanistic physics, be applied to"augmenting" life as felicitously as it had been to "advancingknowledge" ? I n History if Life and Deatb , Bacon alternates b e tween, o n the one hand, prudent warnings and dietetic recommendations based on common sense and, on the other hand, theconstruction of knowledge "deduced by a very methodical procedure" but "not yet verified by experience:' In linking rationalityto experimentation by way of "method," Western science found away to expand its dominion prodigiously, but when it came toknowledge not of the body but of life , the enterprise barely gotoff the ground . Although Descartes, too, concluded his Discourseon Metbod by raising the possibility of " exempting" ourselves fromthe "weakening of old age" by discovering its causes, we knowthat he gradually gave up the ambition of prolonging human lifebeyond its current limits as his research progressed . 11 Moreover,he would come to derive greater satisfaction from morality thanfrom medicine becaus e the former had taught him not to feardeath while the latter had failed to reveal a way to preserve life .As hopes all t o o hastily raised ultimately collapsed, a rupturedeveloped in the classical period between morality and medicine,in which hygiene figured centrally. Shun all those who recom mend frequent recourse to remedies , the article on hygiene inDiderot's Encyclopedie advises, after vaunting the merits of tranquillity and gaiety for the preservation of health. For additionalevidence, we may turn to Tbe Corifbct if tbe Faculties, Kant's lastpublished text . 12 It is oddly radical in its content and was con ceived as a response to Hufeland's Art if Prolonging Life. It defendsdietetics as a personal regimen while attacking the regulations13

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and statutes of the faculty. Stranger still, Kant ultimately incorpo

rated this into a logic of conflict, in which he made it clear that hedefended the autonomy of reason and the will against the medicalinstitution with respect to health, j ust as he had previously d efended it against religious authority (in connection with the salvation of the s oul and against the tyranny of a literal reading ofthe Bible) and, later, against legal authority (in connection withthe social good and in regard to the codification of p ositive law).Kant's earliest commentators were clearly embarrassed by thisand read the text, which had been conceived in terms of "exempting" oneself from old ae, as a first sign of senility. Or, they simply tolerated it for its biographical interest, as Kant supposedlyrevealed something about his life and shared intimate details of hisexistence in it. Kant was supposed to have written, after his ownfashion, the kind of "personal confession" that Nietzsche believedexisted in all great philosophy.When I reread this text from the perspective of "feeding life , "however, I find i t remarkable for quite a different reason: i t shows,in the work of a philosopher reputed to be among the most ab stract, the existence of a p ossible alternative path in thought. At theend of his life , Kant took a different fork, which led him someway down the very path that Chinese thought had blazed beforehim. Indee d , the aging Kant contemplates the gradual " extinction" of "vital force" (LebenskraJt) through lack of exercise. H eworries about countering i t s " slowing" and exhaustion through"stimulation" (Erregungsart), imagines halting "waste" by "retrieving" what has been lost, and envisions how calculating "his quantity of life " should affect his b ehavior. Thus he reflects on theproper measures of sleep and n ourishment and describes whatbreathing techniques are most suitable . He ponders the salutaryfunctions of relaxation and of strolling so as to vary the obj ectsthat meet the eye. Indeed, he even raises a question already posed131

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does the ,York of philosophizing , which i n

volves relating representations devoid of sensory intuition, lead t oa Joss of vitality? He abandons the " w e " of ethical neutrality inorder to present, as Montaigne did, an observant "I" of individualexperience that communicates indirectly because it must inquireof others , as well as reveal to them, the most appropriate proce dures for managing a capital that is i n e ach case unique: as eachindividual ages, he or she must seek out the best path to preservewhatever vital resources and energy remain . For instance , Kantdescribes the tactic he has worked out and the indifferent obj ect(Cicero) on which he fixes his attention in the evening so that hecan fall asleep.But what overall conception comparable to Xi Kang's canKant rely on to demonstrate the soundness of this approach topersonal hygiene, as opposed to the heteronomy of medical remedies and prescriptions? The principle he invokes , which is moralin essence , is one of pure and simple "resolution" (blosser undJester Vorsatz), stoic in character, and consciously opposed to "facility" (Gemiichlichkeit: the facility of eating [too much] or sleeping[too much] or being lazy, and so on) . The power of a dietetics cifthought is such that it can teach us to amuse ourselves by practicing alternation (the philosopher deciding to stop thinking temporarily) so as to relax the mind. If I wish to rest, it is enough thatI will a halt to my thinking. How can one help noticing, however,how inadequate this self-determination of the will, which dominates in the ethical domain, turns out to be when it comes tomanaging our health-capital, and how easily it can be turned againstit? Thus Kant, too, concludes with renunciation: the "art of prolonging life" can only lead, especially in the case of a philosopher,to the "invalidism" of a depleted life , whereupon it can only be"tolerated" miserably.

\yitb the Daoist man of letters w ill thus give us a bet

ter idea of what in China created a middle leyel between medicine and morality (or "body" and "soul " ) and thus encouragedhygienic thought. It will also help us imagine conditions underwhich the possibility of further theoretical development mightarise today. For instance , the idea of alternation - between activity and rest, "gripping" and "releasing," tension and relaxation may not need to come under the head of a stoic decision, as itdoes in Kant. Instead, it can be included from the outset withinthe overarching logic of regulation, in which each member of apair brings on and coptinues the other - a logic that Chin e s ethinkers always sought to elucidat e . I n the most general sense,with regard to both heaven and man, the Chinese tradition thoughtprimarily in terms of "nonexhaustion"f through " constant modification" ("modification" being that which permits "continuation":bian-tona).g Similarly, the importance attached to respiration inChina can be incorporated into the more common idea that, solong as change continues, life is maintaine d by the removal ofobstructions and by "communication" (tona).In explaining the Chinese predisposition to think in terms ofhygiene, I shall limit myself to three points . First, if nourishmentnot only serves to feed the "body" (materially) but also directlystimulates or calms both my energetic capacity and spirit (whichare, in any case, inseparable) , it is because all nourishment is, as wehave seen, the concentration cifbreath-eneray. Xi Kang, in referringto the very detailed knowledge embodied in the Chinese pharmacopoeia, cannot help noticing the enhancement of vitality andeffects on longevity attributed to various plants, which are said toproduce a "transformation-refinement" (jina:h the very term withwhich we began ) . Second, what distinguishes hygienic thoughtfrom our "physical" knowledge , including medicine, is that it isbased on an idea not of causality but of influence (influence of133

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season, and soNot being a thoughtcentered around essence or " quiddity" (which invites the intro duction of a causal relationship) , Chinese thought was conceivedin terms of exhalation-impregnation, or incitation and reaction.Effects, no matter how remote, could remain correlated for indefinite periods (which accounts for the importance accorded tonotions of atmosphere, milieu, and ambience, even in the political realm). Xi Kang compiled lists of such effects, ranging fromthe most palpable , which no one would contest, to the more sub tle, which are no less important. Third, ultimately, hygiene canbe conceived only in relation to the subtle as it gradually spreadsand unfolds over the course of tim e . A factor or phenomenonthat at first passed unnoticed may nevertheless be ripe with consequences later on, solely because of the process it initiates. Thelogic of hygiene is one of propensity. The Chinese mind, whetherengaged in thoughts of hygiene, morality, or strategy, is alwaysprepared to scrutinize the infinitesimal,i the source of evolutionswhose ultimate consequence , unfolding of its own accord, is infinite. By the same token, Xi Kang observe s , if a single wateringcan delay a drought, a single rage may attack our nature and initiate its corruption. If we ordinarily disdain the hygiene of vitalnourishment, it is because we do not know how to perceive thesubterranean maturation of its effect. We wait, then, until theresult is manifest, apparently emerging out of nowhere (as whenwe "fall" ill ) , before we apply the remedy. We wait until weexperience symptoms, in other words, before we begin treatment. By contrast, since Chinese thought approaches the real interms of reserves (of capacity) and the associated processes, itinvites us to attend to the slightest deviation well in advance ofthe crisis that will some day result from it. If we do that, Xi Kangtells us, we realize that the crisis has no "beginning"; we are surprised by the suddenness of an event only when we fail to per-

ceive the silent transformation by which the malady has

progressed.Bacon boldly hoped that science might prolong life by thwartingnature and forcing it to retreat. Kant, renouncing this ambition,trusted in the only power otherwise left to us: resolution of thewill. By contrast, the Daoist man of letters proposes to prolonglife by wedding the processive logic of transformation throughrefinement-decantation to that of inf1uence and reactivity, whichis visible everywhere in nature. That is why, in Xi Kang, prolonging life can describe life> very horizon and take the place of bothmorality and religion. Going back to "fundamentals," he retreatsinto the desperate desire to endure . Yet if I make staying alive mylife's central concern, I encounter a conf1ict of values that obligesme to justify myself. Not that I project staying alive as a "goal," ofcourse. Nor do I revert to the elementary desire and instinct ofself-preservation (Xi Kang's text is free of any kind of psychological justification, and this, for me, is its greatest merit) . So I mustjustify myself, even if I had fervently hoped to escape the ideological by confining myself to the terrain of the vital, where all musttread and which remain s , no matter what one d oes, the mostbasic. For I run up against the question of the legitimacy of whatnevertheless remains a choice.13 And if I radicalize my position, Irun up against the barricade of disbelief: Xi Kang met with theskepticism of those who were suspicious of long life, just as religion in Europ e is vulnerable to the skepticism of those who donot believe in eternal life .Accordingly, he was obliged, at the end of his essay, to refutethem. If one is preoccupied with the realm of ordinary p eople ,he argues, one sees a limited life span everywhere and thereforebelieves that this is the common law. Those who hear of ways of"feeding life " nevertheles s cling to what they have seen and135

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decide that such a thing is impossible . Others may raise questions,

but if they approach the path, they do not know how to startdown it. Still others will assiduously consume drugs for six monthsor a year, but, when they see no result, their will flags, and theystop mid course. Yet others may economize on little things andindulge themselves in big ones, while waiting, "seated" (that is,passively) , for the re sult to come about by itself. O thers mayrepres s their emotions and renounce their appetite for glory, butwith the obj ect of their desire before them and the obj ect of theirhopes still dozens of years in the future , they fear losing both .They b egin t o doubt and struggle with themselves until, caughtbetween the near (which attracts them) and the far (of promise) ,they get exhausted and give up . Since none of these people understand that everything is decided at a more subtle stage - whichonly the "reason of things" allows one to discern initially andwhich, for a long time, remains difficult to appreciate in a tangible way - they fail to persevere long enough to see the result appear. With an "impatient spirit," they see a path of evanescence,discretion, and "placiity." They want to move quickly, but thesituation evolves slowly. They hope for a short-term benefit,whereas the "answer" is remote . Failure is inevitable . They lackthe knowledge necessary to overcome the hasty perspective oftheir emotional excitement and to take the longer view appropriate to the way phenomena evolve and mature . They fail to understand that one cannot will, much less precipitate, access to serenity,on which health and longevity nevertheless ultimately depend.

CHAPTER E LE V E N

Anti-Stress: Cool, Zen, and So On

Nowadays, a new notion seems to have subsumed the pressures

from the world and from within ourselves that turn into innertension. "Stress," with its intense and prolon g ed sibilant, in someways evokes the meanin g of the Latin stringere: to squeeze, compress, stran g le. It expresses the de gree to which "pressure" findsits way inside us. Straddlin g any number of fields carefully separated by disciplinary boundaries (psycholo gy, physiolo gy, neuro chemistry, sociolo gy, and so on) and silently spreadin g its tentaclesto undermine those disciplines' justifications and divisions , thenotion has grown uncontrollably for decades. It now refers to thatwhich is disturbed and disrupted by excess stimulation to the pointof paralyzin g our vitality. The model, the initial ima g e , is, ofcourse, the metal bar that bends and is deformed when a weight isplaced on it. "That which is disturbed": classical science is disappointed - defeated? - by the fact that for once it cannot locatewhatever it is more precisely than this. That is why this notion ,brought to our attention or, rather, imposed by common usag e ,poses a maj or challen g e t o our theoretical ambition. This i s so notonly because it breaks down disciplinary b oundaries and revealsthe de gree to which the separation of the psychic and the somaticis even less tenable than we had previously believed, but especially1 37

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in itself, specific, while this notion forces

us to de- specify. In contrast to medical science, which progressedsteadily by studying ever more closely the sui generis reaction ofthe organism to disease , the study of stress obliges us to recognizethat a syndrome has a generalized status that, in principle, bafflesany attempt to break it down or classify it. O ver the centurie s ,We stern thinkers have learned to distinguish obj ects with evergreater precision and have broken human experience into separatecompartments, in particular the medical, moral, and spiritual." Stress," however, is like a password, or rather an impasse-word,that allows the repressed to return again and again. "I'm stressedout" is the antonym of the discreet "I'm fine ," and nowadays it isj ust as commonplace. What began as a technical term in physicswas peremptorily taken up by everyday thought and has become asymptomatic cliche. It is almost an admonition that reminds us topay attention not so much to classical notions, such as the "unity"or globality of the living, but rather to indivisibili ty. In this respect,the word points to the same thing as the concept of "feeding life,"but it does so from the opposite direction.Similar attention should be paid to the opposites of " stress,"the words we invoke to fre e ourselves from its grip. These, too,filter up from below, if I may put it that way, without reference toestablished knowledge, and maintain themselves through fashionand repetition (in everyday language, subway signs, advertising,and so on) : I am thinking of the words cool, zen , and the like ingenuous, tenuous, atheoretical words. It is as if there were nochoice but to resort to these words without status or even content, if we want to call for the immediate removal of obstaclesand fixations and a return to the fluidity of life . Why must weresort to such terms to express the liberation from stress, itself aword borrowed from elsewhere ? What is being sought with suchwords that cannot otherwise be expressed? This is tantamount tobecause all knowledge

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asking how the standard discourse of the disciplines must be bro

ken down if we are to begin to make surreptitious headway. Mightit simply be that the effect of using foreign terminology is paradoxical? It dilutes meaning as well as p romotes it, helping to getacross what would otherwise be expressed reductively in notionsthat are too specific for the purpose and lack stimulative force insipid, abstract, and consequently sterile notions (such as "relaxing," "chilling out," and "hanging loose ," which are too physical,and blessed "serenity," which is too idyllic) ? The semantic ambiguity of thes e terms would then count as a plus, facilitating theloosening or relaxatiQn of our grip , and so would its evocativepower, which the metaphorical transference into a differentidiom encourages, at once heightening the meaning and settingit off.Or might it be, more gravely, that in order to react to stressand free ourselves from it, we must look for support not traditionally provided by our education, returning to what constitutesus anthrop ologically? In any case, "cool" and " zen" discreetlytake us outside the realms of morality and psychology, the twoestablished pillars of behavior in the West. "Be cool" might suggest a retreat to a level less subj ect to voluntary choice, one involving a c ertain degree of "temperament:' The allusion wouldbe to something akin to the traditional, if largely imaginary, codification of the ethos of various peoples, as when we refer to the"phlegmatic temperament" of the British. Or perhap s this isalready too elaborate a construct and the phrase instead conveysimages of a more relaxed way of life that has resulted from changesin our material civilization (and its forced Americanization, withCoke , jeans, T-shirts, sneakers, and all the rest) , a way of life thatis perhaps mainly the province of youth. Are we talking about acultural revolution or an erosion of "standards" and "values"? Ifthe latter, there would scarcely be any reason for us to abandon1 39

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or invert our usual categories or question our theoretical choices.

" Be zen," o n the other hand, might ge t us out of this dilemma,for in a discreet but decisive way this inj unction may open upa novel avenue of communication between spirituality and theflourishing of vitality. The spirituality at issue here is not theconstructed , theological kind that has us seeking God or somemonopoly of divine love in a tense quest. Rather, it calls for therelease of tension : inner detachment and emptiness, like thatwhich appeared in the Zh uangzi (bear in mind that zen is theChinese appropriation and radicalization of Buddhism), are paramount. D ogmatic obstacles vanish, along with all notional content, and even the imperious insistence on truth. Yet this is notrelativism or skepticism stemming from the " abandonment" oftruth, even if relativism and skepticism are obligatory stages inarriving at this destination (this is, in fact, the subj ect of Zhuangzi'ssecond chapter, the most theoretical of all, whose title hints at itsSignificance: " On the Equality of Things and Discourses" ) . Indeed, the "plenitud e " that Zhuangzi calls on us to relinquishinvolves not appearanc but impediments: to denounce it is notto denounce a metaphysical illusion but to give up the way ourattachment to things impedes the spontaneous development ofprocesses. Similarly, the "void" that Zhuangzi urges us to recoveris less inherent than immanent: it is not the manifestation of some(ontological) "nothingness" but the vehicle through which enoughspace and emptiness are created for effects to unfold. Life canescape whatever confines it and regain its freedom, allowing it toremain open to unfettered transformation. Based on deliberatede-ontologization (and de-theologization), this release from meaning (from dogma, belief, truth) results in a depressurization ofexistence, which ceases to be episodic or forced. The homeostasiswhereby life maintains itself is restored, replacing the tension ofexistence (projecting toward a goal, akin to meaning) .1 40

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" B e zen ": as commonplace as the expre ssion has becom e , it

remains an absurdity, a contradiction in term s , con tradictio inadjecto. Access to zen cannot b e the obj ect of any command; itresists the imperative mode. Indeed, it is not until we have freedourselves from every "thou shalt" and, above all, from the commandment to free ourselves, that access to zen is achieved (and werealize what zen is) . Trust in immanence (that which "comes thusof its own accord , " ziran) cannot be commanded. It is here , itseems to me, that Western Stoicism, which made such heavy useof the imperative, meets its ethical limit. The "systematic" (if everanything was) connecton that Stoicism established between itsethics and its "physics" turns out to be weak. Even if its physics isno longer riveted to being, it is still too encumbered by its insistence on living "in conformity with nature" to indulge of its ownaccord in rest. Zen can be achieved, by contrast, only by abandoning the quest and the goal, which is what it takes disciples so longto grasp as they proceed from temple to temple . Not that it isnecessary, in the end, to renounce the "tending toward" (the ephiesthai of the Greeks on which I commented earlier) ; nor are welimited to discovering a goal immanent in the act itself or in theevent (the "autotelism" of the Stoics) . Without any object of striving, this vacuity is suddenly transformed into plenitude (or the"transparency of morning," as Zhuangzi puts it, after describingthe "whole world" and "things" and even concern for one's own"life " as "external" elements that no longer encumber one's vitality) . Or, rather, even this opposition disapp ears: such "trans parency" is achieved precisely when these factitious disjunctions(plenitude versus vacuity, and so on) cease to interpose themselves as screens. If we remain open to both fullness and emptiness and refuse to assign an end stage unfettered evolution thenbecomes possible . As Zhuangzi's text proceeds, it moves alongthe path where the "re sted" and "relaxed " b eing (xiaoran)a1 4- 1

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understands itself logically, dissolving the tension that stems as

much from disjunctive oppositions as from the fixation on a goal.

The two inevitably go together: the "way" on which we forever

" allow things to happen" goes with the one which we "accompany without inquiry," and the "way" on which we neither "forget the beginning nor seek to know the ultimate end "! coincideswith the one which creates a way out distinct from a form of hap piness predicated on finality.By contrast, it is the sovereign force of resolution, supported bythe progressive constitution of the apparatus of will that dominated the classical age , that seems to me to have blocked the wayto a concept of anti-stress in the West. This leads Westerners today to use frivolous and quirky terms such as "cool," "zen," andthe like , in order to make way for the relaxation whose salutaryeffects invariably elicit comment. N ote that Galen developed hismaterialist theory of the soul sufficiently to remark that "the facultie s of the soul follow the temperaments of the body:'2 Notealso that, if nourishment' and, more broadly, diet determine thetemperaments of the b ody, it should be possible to influence thefaculties of the soul directly: clearly, it was assumed that the psychic could depend on material factor s. C onversely, medical science did not shrink away from explaining in causal terms hownegative psychological events could affect health adversely. Witness D escartes : "The most common cause of slow fever," he remarked to Princess Elizabeth, "is melancholy." 3 If the mind isaffected, the circulation of the blood can b e slowed, so that thecruder parts coagulate, "obstructing the spleen, " while the moresubtle parts affect the lungs and provoke coughing. Only by imposing an inner discipline in a strictly Stoic manner - withdrawing b oth the imagination and the senses from unhappy events sothat they no longer make an impression, and seeking our content-

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ment in overcoming trials and tribulations - can we

suchphysical decline.Western philosophers not only insisted on this, but they firstand foremost insisted on it for themselves. Kant was pleased hewas able to overcome the tendency toward hyp ochondria thatresulted from the smallness of his chest by imposing a spiritualdiet on himself. Descarte s b e lieved that his p enchant, born ofdetermination, for looking at things "from the angle that madethem most agreeable to me" enabled him to overcome the coughand pallor he had inherited from his mother, which all the doctorsagreed doomed him to an early end. The philosopher thus countedon his Stoic will and determination to establish a discipline thatwould save him from his own fragility. H ence he only glimpsed inpassing what a de- stressing relaxation might look like and wasunable to explore the matter further. When Descartes lectures ayoung woman about how the waters of Spa can be good for thecirculation, he mentions the physicians' recommendation to "donothing but imitate those who contemplate the green of the forest, the color of a flower, the flight of a bird, and other things thatrequire no attention and thus persuade themselves that they haveemptied their minds of thought." To behave in this way, Descartesinsists, "is not to waste time but to use it well, for we can take satisfaction from the hope that in this way we can regain our perfecthealth, which is the most fundamental of all the goods we canhave in this life :'4 He says nothing more - indeed, he cannot sayanything more. What he does say, moreover, is said only in pass' ing. To empty the mind of thought: What is the meanin g of this"empty"? Does it not contradict the very possibility of thought inthis metaphysical thinker ? If "thinking of nothing" is for D e s cartes a n extreme case that signals the end o f reflection, beyondwhich he cannot go, it is of course because no intuition of a moreradical emptiness is available to him. Because he cannot make the

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connection with the true de-ontologization (the beneficial detach

ment and release) that his own experience has revealed, he fallsback on the Stoic advice that he lacks the means to transcend.In his chapter "The World of Human Affairs," Zhuangzi recountsthe following stressful situation as a typical case, and it leads himto clarify the nature of the "nourishment" that can remedy it.Just before leaving on a mission to Qi, Zigao, the duke of Ye, consulted Confucius." The king has entrusted me with a very important mission . O fcourse y o u know that Qi treats ambassadors with ostentatious respect, but he is in no haste [to accede to their requests] . It is difficultto influence even an ordinary man, much less a prince. I am veryworried about it.You often say, 'In all affairs, large or small, there are few in which weare not eager for success. If we do not succeed, men treat us ill. If wedo succeed, we invariajJly suffer from an imbalance of yin and yang.To avoid the unfortunate consequences of success and failure - onlya man gifted with abundant capacity can do that:The meals in my home are frugal and plain. No one in my kitchensneeds to seek out a cool place. Yet this morning I received myorders, and tonight I am reduced to drinking ice water. My missionhas made me hot. I have not yet even embarked on the business, andalready I am suffering from disturbances of the yin and the yang:'s

There is nothing ambiguous about the case in point: the dis

turbance of the yin and the yang is clearly a physiological disequilibrium brought about by the stress of the mission. Stimulationhas produced an inner warming that has not yet risen to the level

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of a fever but already indicates a generalized disorder, the nonspe

cific response of the organism t o the stressing agent (stressor) .Confucius (to whom Zhuangzi attributes his response) initiallyanswers with a conventional lesson, stoic in its tenor: " Underheaven there are two great commandments: one is fate , the otherduty." To love one's p arents is "fate" and " cannot be banishedfrom one's heart:' To serve one's prince is "duty," which is incumbent on the subj ect everywhere, and "no one in this world canescape such obligations." It follows that the subj ect must forgethis own wishes and deal with the situation as best he can. Whatleisure would there be :'in loving life and hating death"? There isno choice but to submit to duty, to confront fate.This, in words that Zhuangzi attributes to C onfucius, is theeasy, conventional lesson, which affords comfort through innerresolve and acceptance of the inevitable . But the passage continues in a different tone, revealing a different possibility that subtlycircumvents this advice: "By relying on external things so as toallow your spirit to evolve freely, you trust in what cannot be otherwise in such a way as to nourish your inner equilibrium:'Here the disciple is discreetly invited to distance himself fromthe stoic order, to make use of the outside world and its diversity- to "mount" the world and sit astride it, the text says - so as tomaintain the fre edom of his innermost self. Instead of holdingfirmly to some fixed position or feeling, the disCiple is urged tocontinue to " evolve" in an unpre ssured, relaxed, comfortable,unfettered way (you, b which is Zhuangzi's master-word for thedissipation of stress) . Rather than allow himself to be carriedaway by the stimulation of the temporarily imposed mission, he isto "trust" in the incitemen t that comes to us most intrinsicallyfrom the world and "cannot be otherwise:' "Feeding" one's innerequilibrium (yang zhong),C then, corresponds exactly, I believe, tothe notion of homeostasis that I proposed earlier, which has been

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usedtheorists of stress to support the idea of a basic regulationof the individual that is at once psychic, emotional, and somatic.Ultimately. this is what we "nourish" most fundamentally whenwe cease to talk about nourishin g either the soul or the body,when that alternative is at last transcend e d , leavin g only vitalp otential in its indivisible unity. We nourish equilibrium (the" center, " the "median " ) by harmonizin g yin and yang s o as toalleviate the pressure on both: yin anxiety before the mission iscompleted, as well as yan g contentment when it has been successfully concluded. Thus, in our harmoniously evolVing perseverance,we cannot distin guish amon g the demands of the vital, the moral,and the spiritual (or even the cosmic) .I s e e yet another reason to dwell on the short, discreet, li ghthearted terms cool and zen, beyond the benefit derived from theirstran g eness and even from the incidental way they displace themoral and psycholo gical landmarks we use to guide and judg e ourbehavior. This has to do with the p oetics of the words themselves.When I say cool, i t is easy to see that what counts is n ot so muchthe "intrinsic" meaning of the word as the nonchalant 0 0 sound,which laps the lips as a wave laps the shore , quellin g and diSSipatin g tension as it ebbs. The word itself mimics the gradual processof dischar gin g and silencing a stimulus until it is fully absorbed.Zen is barely even a word, but it has a certain resonance, akin tothat of the strin g of a bow between the fing ers after the arrow hasbeen fired. The original Chinese word, chan (pronounced tchan),d o e s n o t have the same effect: zen is more vibrant, less expansive .It merely points, without encumb erin g itself with meanin g, orerectin g itself into a notion. Both words obviously benefit frombein g monosyllabic (relaxation, release , repose, and serenity aretoo complex). Now, Zhuan gzi deliberately sought such effects aswell. Of the sovereign of the great extremity it is said: "He slept

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[pronounced shu-shu], awoke yu-yu." 6 Although the com

mentary glosses the first term as "relaxed, in comfort" and thesecond as " content with himself" (which Liu translates as "sleepspeacefully" and "wakes up relaxed" and Graham translates as"slept soundly and woke up fresh" ) , what matters most here is theimpression made by the two words (reinforced by repetition) ,since the second has almost no specific meaning.7 The term notonly de-specifies but also de-signifies. By insisting on such a relaxation of meaning, the text liberates the spirit from the pressurein which belonging to the human race immerses us. This pressureis our most constant source of stress - barely alleviated even bysleep - the pressure exerted by the codifications and directions of.language .ZhuaDgzi expresses this de-stressing relaxation (of meanings,action s , and obligations) in a number of way s, surreptitiouslynudging us away from voluntary resolution. Yet everything startswith something like a Stoic tapas: the vicissitudes of life and death,survivaL and loss, misery and glory, p overty and wealth, and soon, "are not important enough to disturb our personal harmony,or to penetrate to our innermost selves: g But the difference fromStoicism again lurks in the background. "Wisdom," we are told,consists in seeing to it that we can "continue" and "move b eyond"these vicissitudes (by remaining in "communication" with ourselves and with the world, according to the double meaning oftaDg), d making it s o they can never stand as obstructions (and,thus, so we never relinquish our "bliss" ) . Once again, the Daoistsage puts words in Confucius's mouth: it is enough if, "day andnight, without the slightest interruption, we remain as fre sh asspringtime in our relations with the world:' As in Chinese martialarts, the ab sence of any interruption in the dynamic flow indicates one must remain open to the virtue of transition p er se; similarly, the invocation of springtime does not instruct us to remain1 47

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attached to(and thereforeits passing) but tells us tokeep pace with life ' s constant growth. Such persistence , unlikeStoicism, is evolving, not resolute. It is not simply a matter ofmaintaining a harmonious and positive relation to the world, asChinese commentators initially understood i t. It is also " t o evolvein concert with the world," as the seasons do, so that through allits vicissitudes (and owing to the very constancy of change) wemaintain our vitality as fresh as it was in its inception springtime.This liberating relaxation stands in sharp contrast to both selfindulgent indifference and willful rigidity. It transcends parasiticstimuli and excitations to remain open to the constant flux ofincentives that replenishes the world. It requires physical conditioning and upkeep . It obliges us to modify our behavior, or, rather,it results from such a modification. Indeed, this is something thatmost clearly distinguishes the teaching of vital nourishment fromphilosophy. When Chipped Tooth asks the Clothed One about the"way, " dao, in the Zhuangzi, the latter responds: "Straighten upyour body, unify your vision, and the [natural] harmony of Heavenwill come to you. Curb yottr intelligence, unify your attitude, andthe [dimension of] spirit will come to dwell in yoU:'9 When "theway dwells in you, your pupils will be like those of a newborn,"your gaze will be naive , ingenuous, uninformed, and "you willno longer ask questions about causality." The sempiternal andexhausting why of things will at last come up empty. In zen temple s , of cours e, one of the first lessons taught i s how to sit upstraight but without rigidity, in a "correct" but unforced posture:neither rigid nor slumped. Unless one masters this, there is n opoint in staying. More than any words, this silent correctness ofposture in itself leads to a proper attitude. It is enough to sit properly on the harsh ground so that the "dorsal artery" (du: throughwhich the energetic circulation flows) is in the proper position.There should be no effort to hold oneself erect or strive for any-

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Inner obstructions and coagulations will then dissolve. Such

a "unification of attitude" restores communication between inside and outside , so that the world is once again "lodged" in theworld, and beings " dwell in their uses," as Zhuangzi says. Thestressful urge to impart meaning (to life, death, and so on) dissipates. Zen refers to the consistent achievement of such an effect,which is as much a sensation as an idea, as well as the unambiguous foundation of zen teaching. Relaxation is so fully achieved inthis passage that Chipped Tooth, at last relinquishing the tediousinquiries of intelligence, "falls into a deep sleep" even before theClothed One has finished ,speaking. The humor is directed at boththe prescriptions of ritual and the relationship between masterand disciple , which one must learn to reverse.

1 49

CHAPTER T WE L VE

Condemned to the Eternal Silence

of Processes

After considering and refuting the various reasons why so many

people are unnecessarily suspicious' of the long life , Xi Kang endshis e ssay "on feeding life " by explicitly associating the theme ofvital nourishment, inherited from Zhuangzi, with the anti-stressand hygiene themes of longevity. The conclusion deserves to betranslated in its entirety for its assured manner: an even tension ismaintained throughout, from one element to the next (there is nolonger any pretense of an argument), so as to present regulationas a self-contained and smoothly coherent package. All fluctuation of tone is banished, and not so much as a whisper of emotionremains:But one who is skilled at nourishing life is not like this. Pure, empty,tranquil, at peace, "he diminishes self-interest and lessons his desires:' He knows that fame and position injure virtue; therefore hedisregards them and seeks them not. It is not that he desires them butforcefully forbids them. He knows that rich flavors harm the nature;therefore he rej ects them and pays them no mind. It is not that hefirst longs for them and only then represses [his true feelings]. External things, because they ensnare the mind, he does not maintain.Spirit and breath, because they are unsullied and pure, on these alone

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is his attention focussed. Open and unrestrained is

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worry and care, silent and still. devoid of thought am/ concern. Furthermore. he maintains this state with the one and nourishes it withharmony. Harmony and principle daily increase and he becomes onewith the Great Accord [ Great Natural Conformity ] . After this hesteams [himself] with magic fungus and soaks in sweet water from aspring; dries [himself] off in the morning sun and soothes [himself]with the five strings. Without action and self-attained, his body ethereal and mind profound, he forgets happiness, and as a result his joy iscomplete; he leaves life behind , and as a result his p erson is preserved. If he can go on from this, he can come close to comparing inold age with Hsien-men and matching his years with Prince Ch'iao.How can it be that such people do not exist ? l

Here, the recapitulation creates a claustrophobic effect, and the

text settles into self- congratulation, yielding to its various penchants and discreetly withdrawing from debate. Its art lies in theeasy glide from sentence to sentence (a far remove from the polemical violence and even insistence of the Stoics). Themes previously evoked press on one another to cover the entire range of thethinkable, leaving nothing untouched. Everything comes togetherin this final bouquet: how to "keep" (one's) vitality by liberatingand unifying it (see Chapter One); refinement of one's physicalb eing, which becomes more " subtle , " while at the same time"deepening" the spirit (see Chapter Two); reduction of one's selfish interest in order to achieve full self-possession, along with the"abandonment of one's life" in order to facilitate its unfolding (seeChapter Three ) ; inner vacancy and idlene s s based on the immanence of the great natural conformity (compare the de-ontologization of Chapters Four and Eleven) ; purification of the breathenergy leading to unfolding of the spiritual dimension (shen-qi;asee Chapter Seven) ; procedures of vital nourishment that culmi-

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nate in an intimate relationship of participation and accompani

ment with the elements of the world, the sources of pure waterand the rising sun ( s e e Chapter Eight) ; "bliss" as the result ofoblivion, of "forgetting" to seek contentment, as all pursuits ofhappiness dissolve in plenitude ("he forgets happiness, and as aresult his joy is complete , " is Robert G . H enricks 's tran slation;2see Chapter Nine); the logic of influence through impregnationimbibing and the notion of the inherent "coherence" (Ii) b of thevital as the basis of hygiene and longevity (see Chapter Ten) ; andvital nourishment, understood as "homeostasis" that encourages"harmony" and relaxation in the face of stressful pressure ( s e eChapter Eleven) . Note that a notion of t h e s oul i s never m e n tioned i n any of this, and that what we designate b y the unitaryterm "body" is here divided b etween constitutive b eing, on theone hand, and p er s onal life , on the other (recall that the compound of the two, shen-ti , emerges as a stable expression for bodyonly in modern Chinese; see Chapter Five and Six) .It is admirable how subtly all the s e theme s are woven together. They shed light on one another without any imperiousneed for a system to organize them. The vital becomes the basisof a unitary vision, which, in effect, takes the place of morality aswell as religion. Indeed, the mesh appears to b e so fin e that itexcludes all ambiguity, doubt, and anxiety and leaves no opportunity for deviation - to the p oint that it stifles cri e s , laughter,pathos, jubilation, and so on. Is this denial? It is equally surprisingto s e e what this epilogue r e solutely omits - in p articular, the"other," in any of its many guises, is rigorously ignored. D e s cartes's solipsism w a s temporary, but the solipsism i n which theadept of long life buries himself (in his indefinite embrace of whatis implied by "harmony" ) is p ermanent. He will never encounteranything capable of extracting him from it. H ence there is noroom for speech either - not even reflexive speech addressed to153

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oneself. I f to think is to dialogue with oneself, does the sage

think? Elucidation of the coherence inherent in the vital presumably takes place before language introduces disjunction by severing of words from things. Xi Kang's conclusion thus erases itself.It proposes no message, and no meaning can be inferred.It would be easy to contrast this portrait of the adept of long lifewith the way its author died. Xi Kang was related by marriage tothe recently overthrown ruling family and did everything he couldthroughout his life to remain aloof from p olitics and its torments.O n e day, a p owerful courtier named Zhong Hui honored himwith a visit, but Xi Kang continued to work metal in his forge as ifhis guest were not there. Melting crude matter to obtain something purer and stronger from it - was this not what he was tryingto do to himself, to forge an imperishable body? And is not thatwhich lies between "heaven and earth" all around us, like "a greatbellows" maintaining cosmic energy in constant motion, according to Laozi?3 The lesson regarding the importunate guest is clear:Xi Kang will not allow :himself to be distracted by affairs of theworld.Although it is possible to remain aloof from the rivalries andvanitie s of politics, one cannot shun the p olitical with impunity.By surrendering to the unitary celebration of "harmony" and refusing to accept dissonance with "the natural" in order to reflecton the conditions of autonomy, and, further, by failing to conceiveof any essence, form, or model (of the right or the good) externalto and transcending the world toward which his aspirations might"tend, " the Chinese man of letters subj e cted himself to the arbitrary application of force , which he had no means to challenge.Legitimating that force in cosmological terms - heaven and earth,yin and yang - only increases the alienation. By refusing to conceptualize conflict, he enslaved himself. By conceiving of the ideal1 54

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of "availability" as a comprehensive disposition of his personality, so

that he was equally open to any and every possibility and did notrule anything out a priori, his conduct evolved solely in responseto his situation. H e therefore ultimately fails to develop any position vis-a-vis power - for a position implies an end to flow, blockage, and partiality. By refusing to take sides, "standing neither fornor against," as Confucius recommended,4 he has made it impossible for himself to constitute another side (different from that ofpower) and closed off the possibility of dissidence. Thus the Chinese man of letters never transformed himself into an intellectual, backed by an order of values other than that derived fromhistory. For a - liberating - order of the political to have beenconstituted and institutionalized,' an ideal would have had to bede signated, an ideal distinct from the functionality of proces s ,which Chinese thought conceptualized as p ermanently harm o nious. In other w o r d s , a utopia would have to have been pro duced. In Gre e c e , the concept of utopia goes back at least toPlato's Rep ublic. This was the purp o se of the West's tenaciousdevotion to the idea of happiness. This idea of happiness, constantly in need of renovation, was the price - the heavy price that had to b e paid in order for the political to emerge as a separate order, favorable to autonomy.Lacking this, the Chinese man of letters found himself withoutresources. Throughout nearly two millennia of history, his onlyoptions were to serve the prince or to fall back on personal development. He e stablishe d no rights of any kind : no right of s elfdefense or contradiction, much less of criticism. Although a dutyof "remonstrance" was ascribed to him vis-a-vis the prince (at hisown risk, to be sure), protest as such was forbidden. In the name ifwhat could he protest? Xi Kang's biography is a case in point.Because of his association with a nasty family dispute, in which heplayed no part, it was easy for the powers of the day to charge him155

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pretext was good enough

with a crime and send him to prison.to get rid of a man who not only refused a career but also impliedby his actions that there really was no need for the state apparatusthat was supposed to maintain the great natural regulation at thehuman level. The state inevitably intervened b etween personaldevelopment cultivated in the name of long life and the cosmicorder its adepts invoked. Thus the alternative - reimagined in literary tradition as harmonious " alternation" b etween "advance"and "retreat," between service and retirement, between courtlydutie s and the solitude of bamb o o , fingering the lute - was ofcour s e fundamentally only an illusion (a mere escap e , withoututop ian overtones) ill concealed by endles s repetition. The outcome was hardly in doubt.Xi Kang was condemned to d eath at the age of thirty-nin e .The three thousand students o f the great school petitioned that h ebe made their master. This was the only attempt to save him, andthe request was not granted. Worse than the injustice of his deathwas the fact that it served no purp o s e . Unlike Socrates's death,which set an example and embodied an ideal signifying anotherorder of values, Xi Kang's death - though widely mourned andcited s o frequently that it became a literary topos - never servedto j ustify revolt or sustain hope or thought of progress. And forgood reason: there was no trial, no argument for or against, noclash of views (for want of an appropriate institution); there wasnothing like the Greek "antilogy." The unspoken , the power ofallusion, prevailed, and this sapped the power to construct a position by refutation. Only by default does Xi Kang embody nonconformism and the perils it entails (which are worth meditating on) .Even worse, his last poem, " Obscure Sadness," written in prison,though widely read and include d in numerous anthologies, wasglossed as the ultimate sign of humility, in which the author supposedly expressed his repentance to the powers that b e . There

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was no escap e from the ideological framework of the great and

supposedly n atural functionality - it closed over him and swallowed him up. Power inevitably had the last word, since no rivaldiscourse emerged. When the time set for his execution arrived,Xi Kang allegedly played "Ode to the Great Peace" on his luteone last time. What choice did he have other than to invoke harmony yet QgQin? Then , as he was being put to death, he reportedlyturned to face his shadow. Alas, it was still there, following him asalways. The D aoists believed that a person who had refined anddecanted his nature to the point that he no longer cast a shadowcould rest assured that his material nature had been purified andbecome imperishable.H aving explored Xi Kang's fate , we are in a position to understand that he not only lacked an O ther and a language but that healso sought to protect himself from any relation to temporality.Can he therefore truly be called a "subj ect"? Even though he doesnot mystically identify with the All (or divinity) but simply "attains" or "obtains" himselfc by refraining from action and, indeed,abandoning his life , he is said to b e in a p osition to "ensure theexistence of his own person:'d Even if what is at stake is his individual life (and what is more strictly individual than one's life capital?), he is nevertheless devoid of all personality and character inthe end. Nothing seems to leave a trace in him. There is no focalpoint, no grain of solidity in all this fluidity. Having freed himselffrom any possibility of being trapped, he has also placed himselfbeyond the reach of any event, be it traumatic or ecstatic. Avoiding love or hate , he lacks any "obj ect," so that, strictly speaking,nothing can happen to him. Thus free of personal history, he becomes all the more vulnerable to that great consumer of energy,history writ large.Consequently, this figure of wisdom is of more than just ideo1 57

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logical interest. Psychoanalysis may also find this case worthwhile

to ponder, if only because it seems so foreign to the psychoanalytic approach that it may hint at an alternative . A comparisonmight suggest alternative modes of self-transformation: metapsychological investigation and deciphering of the repressed in psychoanalysis vs. refinement and fre eing of one's energy in vitalnourishment. The two run parallel to one another, each insisting,perhaps , on the exclusion of the other. Might nourishment be the"other solution"? Rather than investigate our past relationship tothe other (through the talking cure, transference , and so on) inthe hope of exploring an unconscious existential intricacy that isthe s ource of both neurosis and personality (sexual as well asexperiential), we might seek a very different kind of liberation. Itwould be a transformation of our "ways" of communication, bothinternal and with the "world, " physical and physiological as wellas psychic, so as to ensure that our constitutive being (not just our"soul" or "body" ) "keeps" evolving. One would then rely not onintrospection but on the elementary faculty of respiration (andthus on the "internal gaze" directed toward one's energies, calm,proper position, and so on) . One would count not on the powerof determination and liberation through speech (although psychoanalysts are, of course, wary of the function of confession) buton a capacity for "voiding" and "evacuation" through proceduresof detachment and concentration that would reestablish completeprocessivity throughout one 's being and restore the unity of theorganic and the mental. This continues until the "transparency ofmorning" is attained, at which p oint life is cleansed of its opacityand everything is once again part of a process of development."Meditation, " the term most commonly used in the West todayto designate this activity of internal harmonization, turns out tobe inadequate for expressing this process of "nourishment" andintegralization that develops vitality to the full .

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In any case, what isexist side by side, so that people today can participate either in thegreat Western tradition of catharsis aimed at purging and transforming emotions , an d from which p sychoanalysis ultimatelyderives or in the great Chinese tradition of the dao and cosmicenergetic regulation. So what if one knocks at the door of theEastern master practicing the art of long life or the Western analyst practicing the art of the couch (just as there are two medicines, two cuisines, and so on) ? What matters more, I think, is thatthe parallel existence of these two practices points toward a common de -jI nalization of existence based solely on managing the waywe care for ourselves. Both practices aim to reduce obstructionsand blockage s by freeing us fro adherences and fixations andrestoring life 's viability. Psychoanalytic practice is also interestedprimarily in phenomena of expenditure (deriving from inhibition,compulsion, and the like ) , despite its ideological and (in Freud'scase, at least) in some ways atavistic attachment to finality. We seeonly a massive reinvestment of meaning in response to this common and recent disaffection with the production and promotionof meaning in the West. The supposed remedy is a primal regression t o the religious (with or without "religion" ) : a return t o the"sacred," to the question of evil, to God.Faced with this , philosophy has, I think, been slow to react andhas largely lacked the means to do so. Clearly, these developmentshave forced it to adopt a new program. The absence of ends is notsomething it needs to hide or compensate for. If it tries to do so,all it will do is just recycle obsolete ideologies. The task of philosophy today is, I b elieve, above all to reconsider i t s insistence onmeaning, which h a s driven i t to this point, and to ponder "existence " as a replacement for the quest for truth. To that end, itneeds to draw on the cultural choices of other civilizations inorder to challenge its own anthropological presuppositions more-

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radically. It can use these other civilizations to rdlect on itself.

The goal is not to "expand our concepts" in the sense of subsuming a broader diversity, as philosophy has claimed to do since itsglobalization. It is, rather, to subj ect itself to a fundamental - and ,for philosophy, unprecedented - derangement, comparable to thederangement of which, in our tim e , art alone has shown itselfcapable . The point would be to reveal the whole range of optionsand assumptions philosophers have unwittingly adopted to determine philosophy's quite distinctive fat e . For hasn 't art alwaysbeen ahead of philosophy? (And is it not alone in the contempo rary period i n having attempted , through i t s practice, t o uprootitself?) Art today demonstrates how a practice can explore diversecultures in order to purge its atavisms and reinvent itself. Without giving in to facile exoticism, philosophy can take a more rigorous approach to revising its universal vocation. This can lead to abolder (and more triumphal) strategy for reoccupying its traditional terrain, where the need for it is urgently felt - in moralityand politics above all.

Shijing and the Liji. It also means "brilliant" (because it is highlighted, like atarget) and "good example:' The sense of "obj ective" is much rarer (see, forexample, Hanfeizi, Han hi Tzu 2 2 : a sovereign would be wrong to listen to theories "without having their application as his objective," bu yi gongyong wei di).Indeed, it w a s t h e Legists who sketched o u t a rationalism of finality i n reactionto the divinatory rationalism based on the deployment of correspondences.Hanfeizi, for instance, describes the discipline of archery not in ritualistic terms(involving certain prescribed gestures and positions) but in terms of a fixed goal168

3 . Mengzi, Mencius 2 a 2 . 1 6 .4. Laozi, Laozi 64.5. In China, the words for "to care for" and "to govern" are the same.b Wealso find a parallelism between the physical existence of the individual and thebody of the state, as well as between the authority of the spirit and the power ofthe prince, the husbanding of vital energy and the accumulation of riches in theroyal treasury, and so on.6. See Jackie Pigeaud, L 'art et Ie vivant (Paris: Gallimard, 1 9 9 5 ) , ch. 6; compare Per- Gunnar Ottosson, Scholastic Medicine and Philosophy: A Study of Com